Last night I've got the usual regular marketing email by Canon, that I am subscribed too.
This time, however, it has an interesting personal detail. Check this screenshot out:
A phrase took my attention right away:
"A lot’s changed since you took home your EOS 550D 11 years ago."
Yes, that number is perfectly correct. And yes, that is my first digital camera I purchased myself by Canon. I still have it, it functions properly, however, I don't use it a lot lately.
Once I read the email, at first, I got puzzled, asking myself, "How do they know that?". In a few moments, though, I remembered that I applied to Canon CPS, that's the abbreviation for Canon Professional Services.
For those who don't know, CPS is quite an useful service, it's points and levels where photographers owning Canon equipment register their products, with serial numbers, dates and places of purchase and depending on the types and the number of Canon items owned, people get into Bronze, Silver, Gold, and so on, level, providing useful perks like priority and specified days for maintenance and repairs, courier fees, access to special club and news events, etc.
Now back to how this all reflected upon me.
Eleven years, my goodness, that long? Time flies. For real!
Some thought sneaked right away... "Isn't it about the right time for a change?". "Why don't you try again something that pays better?", "Haven't you fulfilled that dream already?".
Well. To be completely honest here, photography, as profession is far away from being paid well and respected a lot. Of course, as an art, it may seem easier. True, photographers usually don't have to handle piles of shit and what we do usually brings positive emotions, feelings and moods.
In my humble opinion, Photography, as profession, is slightly fading away. Nowadays, everyone calls themself photographer, and everyone has a decent digital camera in their pockets. Nothing bad in that. Sometimes pointing and clicking the virtual button on the screen, aided more and more by AI, produces better images than the photos coming out of the "big black heavy cameras".
Probably, at some point, only the good art will remain, of course, if it doesn't get suffocated by the piles of quickly generated images.
The "Fine Art Photography" vs. the "clickage" or the "imagery", or whatever the combination of AI-generated-stuff + mobile-pics is going to be called.
I hope that's a good thing for the future of Photography. We will see.
Anyway, my point here is, that I believe that to the question "What do you do for a living?", we will all be hearing less and less the answer "I am a pro photographer."
That below is just a photo I took after sunset in Greece. Of course, the end of the day is not the end of the story. The night is beautiful as well!
For me personally, I have no clear vision at the moment. I have a few ideas though, and I am already learning some new skills and sharpening some old ones...
If you've gotten up to this point, please accept the positive vibes I am sending you right now :)
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Have a great day!
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@lightcaptured, @pixresteemer(6/10) sent LUV. | connect | community | HiveWiki | NFT | <>< daily
! help(no space) to get help on Hive. InfoI agree that photography is becoming more and more accessible to everyone, which is both a good and a bad thing. On the one hand, it's great that more people are able to express themselves creatively through photography. On the other hand, it can be difficult to stand out from the crowd when everyone has a camera in their pocket.
I also agree that the definition of "fine art photography" is becoming more and more blurred. With the rise of AI-generated imagery and mobile photography, it's becoming harder to distinguish between what is art and what is simply a snapshot.
I think it's important for photographers to focus on creating work that is meaningful to them, regardless of whether or not it fits into the traditional definition of "fine art." If you're passionate about photography, then you should keep doing it, even if it's not the most lucrative career path.
I'm curious to hear what your new ideas are for the future of photography. I think it's an exciting time to be a photographer, and I'm looking forward to seeing what the future holds.
Thanks buddy.
Well, no new ideas here, it's just that the future is now. Already.
We'll see less and less new cameras sold while their prices will keep rising and their sizes and weights decreasing. Quantity usually doesn't correspond to quality. So the drop in quality, of the 100% human-produced images, will keep decreasing.