I was thinking about the whole "money from photography" thing while making my (now deleted but, of course, brilliant and insightful
😀 post on the earlier incarnation of this thread).
In that post I noted, amongst other (more dazzling!) points, that I'd sell copies of my photos (prints or files) if anyone were interested, which seems unlikely. But I'd not (in the unlikely event it were offered) accept any form of commission or assignment - because I want to keep taking photos for the love of it, without any form of deadline pressure or pressure to produce particular types of photos. I get plenty of that in my day job - photography is supposed to get me away from all that. And I certainly don't want to rely on photography for my income (all questions of ability aside
🙂 ), again because its my escape, not my job.
But that got me to thinking. I recently attended a photography workshop run under the banner of the Australian Geographic Society by Darren Leal of
WildVisions Photography. Through the workshop, and while having drinks after the days' formalities were over, and so on, Darren had a bit to say about how he makes his living and I formed a bunch of impressions as well.
Now, Darren is a very good photographer specialising mostly in wildlife and macro, with a bit of landscape work. He's won competitions, received awards, makes a lot of stock sales and gets good commercial commissions (eg. SeaWorld at the Gold Coast) and so on. But I got the distinct impression that he and his family would be eating very thin soup if he relied on selling his photos to make a living, even though he is good and he does sell.
Where he really makes his money, it seems (note its my inference, not his statements), is in running photography courses and capturing a bigger-than-usual part of the value of that through his wife running the travel agency side of the business. (That's a nice piece of synergy, though I'm not sure if it was deliberate or if things just happened that way.) I also got the impression (see note above) that he used to make his living selling photos but that this became unsupportable through the double-whammy of increasing family responsibilities and declining ability to sell photos at decent prices.
And there were some real stories (not just inferences) there. For example, he still receives royalties on photos published in books by a very well known Australian photographer. But that photographer, these days, mostly provides a very small percentage of the photos in his books and is progressively replacing images that command royalties with photos he pays a flat $50 Australian (or so) for, demanding all rights into perpetuity. (It also seems, in this particular case, that the quality of the photographs is declining steeply, but that matters not since celebrity name recognition trumps all.) And that, apparently, is the direction the market is going - at least here in Oz. He also speculated (no names!) that buyers in publishing, advertising and the like seem to be, um, cooperating to push things their way, while photographers appear to be conspiring to cut each others' throats.
Now, I'm sure that different segments of the photography market have quite different dynamics and I'm also pretty sure that wildlife photography is an especially tough way to make a living compared to other market niches. But I'm also starting to get the impression that the commercial value of photographs themselves seems to be declining to the point that a lot of photographers are using their images as, essentially, marketing material while making their real living from running courses and workshops, giving lectures and the like.
And I find that pretty depressing. It may not gore
my ox, since I make my living elsewhere but, well, I like the photos themselves (when they're good, of course). The thought that the real business of photographers is lecturing on some combination of "this is how to set your camera up, and fix it like this in Photoshop when you stuff it up", with photographs reduced to promotional material for an air-fair/hotel-room/workshop package deal is, well, sad but perhaps true.
Its not that I think there's anything wrong with that as a way to make a living, and not that useful services aren't being provided. It just seems wrong that its now difficult for a photographer to make a living by producing photographs. A very old-fashioned idea it seems - but I hope its time comes again.
...Mike
