bmattock
Veteran
Worth a read, perhaps:
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20091124/0318437068.shtml
Here's a link to the website in question:
http://photobusinessforum.blogspot.com/2009/11/microstock-creates-new-markets-no-it.html
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20091124/0318437068.shtml
Here's a link to the website in question:
http://photobusinessforum.blogspot.com/2009/11/microstock-creates-new-markets-no-it.html
Pickett Wilson
Veteran
The guy has a point. Microstock along with the internet have made photography worthless in the marketplace.
emraphoto
Veteran
not much for spending my time complaining however i am with Pickett, there is a point to be considered.
Chriscrawfordphoto
Real Men Shoot Film.
How do you 'adapt' to your work becoming worthless? Economists like to say **** like that, but the fact is you can't adapt to that.
Roger Hicks
Veteran
Dear Chris,
Well, as most economists' work is worthless, it comes naturally to them.
Have you read The Black Swan?
Cheers,
R.
wgerrard
Veteran
No, you can't. Economists would be better advised to speak the truth and just admit that some markets and some ways of making money die.
Chris lives in Fort Wayne, and I have bunches of relatives not far away in Ohio. Most of them used to work at places like auto and heavy appliance factories. Not anymore, 'cause those factories are gone. Some folks seem to think economic recovery means starting those factories up again. That isn't gonna happen. Stuff happens, and sometimes people get hurt.
Chriscrawfordphoto
Real Men Shoot Film.
So how do you suggest feeding these people? $7 an hour at walmart doesn't do it. And given that Americans would rather die than have to help their fellow man through government support programs for those the 'economy' has decided are worthless, the only way we are going to recover is to bring back those jobs. Think about this: no nation in history has ever prospered producing nothing. The economists say that high tech jobs will do it. Bull. How many engineers and scientists are really needed, and what about the majority of the population that simply is not able, intellectually, to earn a PhD or a Masters degree in engineering or computer programming or whatever? Do they simply deserve to die? That seems to be the opinion of our business leaders and their servants in Washington. There are 300 million people in this country. All of them are human beings and CITIZENS who have a basic human right to life. That is denied those who are unemployed or employed at povrety wages.
venchka
Veteran
Apparently digital hasn't made all photography worthless. I know wedding photographers who can gross $2,500 for a wedding. Granted, they don't get that figure for every wedding. They aren't working for free.
Roger Hicks
Veteran
Dear Chris,
Well, yeah, you're a fine art photographer and I'm a journalist. Quite honestly, it would suit many of the people with the money if we both died of starvation. We're damnably inconvenient to those who rely on a cowed, pliable workforce who will be grateful for starvation wages even when they do exactly what the stupid capitalists want.
Smart capitalists recognize that we are essential...
Tasho delek,
R/
Well, yeah, you're a fine art photographer and I'm a journalist. Quite honestly, it would suit many of the people with the money if we both died of starvation. We're damnably inconvenient to those who rely on a cowed, pliable workforce who will be grateful for starvation wages even when they do exactly what the stupid capitalists want.
Smart capitalists recognize that we are essential...
Tasho delek,
R/
Pickett Wilson
Veteran
Who are your friends? 
The photographers I know, from daily newspaper photographers to major agency photographers, say they are definitely not doing well these days.
The photographers I know, from daily newspaper photographers to major agency photographers, say they are definitely not doing well these days.
Andy Kibber
Well-known
Methinks Fred has a point. I wonder how many folks are paying for a degree in photography now vs. thirty years ago.
Business will come back when the people that have money (capitalists) decide it is worth the risk. That will happen when the government gets out of the way, and/or restores incentives...i.e., lower taxes, so the investment can pay off. That's when jobs come back. It takes confidence in the future to invest in people; right now, there is little confidence, hence high unemployment.
The 'servants' in Washington believe the people are their servants. They have forgotten that they work for us, and it's our money, not theirs.
antiquark
Derek Ross
I dunno, it seems like microstock inhabits a different niche of the "photosphere."
Take a look at the most popular pictures at BigStockPhoto:
http://www.bigstockphoto.com/search.php?order=popular
There's very little in the way of artistic photography like you'd see in the RFF gallery. It's more like a collection of clipart intended for corporate reports and greeting cards. My impression is (and I could be wrong) that if you're currently making a living as a fine art photographer, you don't have to worry about the microstock companies.
Take a look at the most popular pictures at BigStockPhoto:
http://www.bigstockphoto.com/search.php?order=popular
There's very little in the way of artistic photography like you'd see in the RFF gallery. It's more like a collection of clipart intended for corporate reports and greeting cards. My impression is (and I could be wrong) that if you're currently making a living as a fine art photographer, you don't have to worry about the microstock companies.
Chriscrawfordphoto
Real Men Shoot Film.
The government getting out of the way is what encouraged businesses to export every living wage job they could.
amateriat
We're all light!
Okay: when's the last time you heard somebody say, "Those people really earn their pay?" It seems that in most every conversations I hear involving groups of people, from teachers to athletes to line workers (well, the relative few line workers we have left in these parts...), the common refrain is that (fill-in-the-blank) "make too much money." Everybody's a hard-nosed accountant until it comes down to the paycheck they're pulling. Relatively few people scrutinized the paydays Annie Leibowitz was pulling down until her untimely fall from grace (and almost unbelievably stupid "method" of accounting). We can argue about how well (or not) she handled the money she made, but can we agree that she somehow earned all that lucre? Apparently, a lot of her clients thought so, regardless of what you or I think of her work in the main.
Technology is gradually usurping fields of work that required trained, hands-on skill. To a lot of people, this didn't matter much when this got started, because the principal victims were employed in the seemingly unsexy "smoketack" industries–steel, manufacturing, "durable goods." The line we were given, from "on high", was that these industries were so yesterday, and that the real action was in the "knowledge industry" involving stuff held loosely under the banner of "high tech." In addition, the nation's economy was going to move to a "service-based" model, like, oh...financial markets?
This put me in mind of a Tom Toles cartoon from the 1980s, The message fit well then, and, regrettably, even better now:
The torture, it would appear, never stops. Even these guys are starting to feel the heat, and when it starts getting that bad, almost all bets are off.
Answers? I've got no real ones yet, and ideas from the usual suspects (on either side of the aisle) aren't too encouraging either. But we can't just push paper and click keyboards and mice to get out of this anymore. (Who said that you can't create an economy from just mowing peoples lawns and cutting hair?) I'm generally not Mr. Doom n' Gloom, and I'm not totally pessimistic about this, but for now the signposts aren't making me smile too much.
- Barrett
Technology is gradually usurping fields of work that required trained, hands-on skill. To a lot of people, this didn't matter much when this got started, because the principal victims were employed in the seemingly unsexy "smoketack" industries–steel, manufacturing, "durable goods." The line we were given, from "on high", was that these industries were so yesterday, and that the real action was in the "knowledge industry" involving stuff held loosely under the banner of "high tech." In addition, the nation's economy was going to move to a "service-based" model, like, oh...financial markets?
This put me in mind of a Tom Toles cartoon from the 1980s, The message fit well then, and, regrettably, even better now:
The torture, it would appear, never stops. Even these guys are starting to feel the heat, and when it starts getting that bad, almost all bets are off.
Answers? I've got no real ones yet, and ideas from the usual suspects (on either side of the aisle) aren't too encouraging either. But we can't just push paper and click keyboards and mice to get out of this anymore. (Who said that you can't create an economy from just mowing peoples lawns and cutting hair?) I'm generally not Mr. Doom n' Gloom, and I'm not totally pessimistic about this, but for now the signposts aren't making me smile too much.
- Barrett
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wgerrard
Veteran
I agree, Chris, particularly about our responsibilities for each other. But I don't have any answers. I will say I think it is wrongheaded for cities that have been hit by industrial collapse to plan or even hope that those same industries will return. They aren't. For example, NCR used to employ thousands in Dayton, Ohio (including some of my relatives). Now, it's essentially an empty shell, employing dozens. The market changed and NCR failed to change with it. NCR will never come back. Neither will the GM and Delco plants that Dayton has lost. The few new jobs that have been created have been, as you said, in minimum wage retail and service businesses. I.e., Walmarts and fast food. in many respects, those jobs are the 21st century version of sharecropping: There's no other work to be found, but they don't pay enough to allow people to move up the ladder. And, as towns depopulate, their tax bases begin to vanish as the average income of their residents declines.
However, the fact that short-sighted corporations failed because they didn't shift their product lines in parallel with market tastes does not mean that clear-eyed people can't make things people want to buy. The crux of the problem is whether those industries can find a home in towns like Dayton or Fort Wayne or Toledo or any of the others.
Many, maybe most, jobs in rustbelt Midwestern cities were created to feed parts and other products to the auto factories in Detroit, as well as to other heavy industrial customers who made big ticket consumer products. The downsizing of American auto making is going to be permanent, so if similar industries are going to be created in the Midwest, it will be to support new factories making new products that people actually want to buy. I have no idea what those products might be. But, frankly, I am skeptical that heavy industry that employs hundreds or thousands of high school graduates in a single facility will ever happen in this country again.
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Turtle
Veteran
Surely there is a balance. A national economy has to have a certain level of efficiency/competitiveness. It cannot prop up every relic of the past or the people associated with it, indefinitely. However, it can, and arguably should, support some for a period of time after which things need to move on. People are going to suffer, but the idea of keeping every mill/mine/factory running on subsidies is folly; the entire economy would go down the pan. I guess the difficulty comes in when people either don't want to adapt to change or simply cannot (and there are many reasons for the latter as rightly pointed out). One thing is for sure, you cannot force or will a dead industry back into life when the numbers don't add up now and will only get worse with time.
I believe that the gradual death of PJ photography is not something we can fight. This does not mean photography is dead, only that it is not exactly easy to make a career as a photojournalist any more. photojournalism is only part of the wider photography sector. As painful as this is for those committed to careers, there is no point in blaming others for its demise. there are countless other examples of this elsewhere in the economy. Surely many of us are benefiting from careers which arose off the backs of dying industries/sectors/technologies? I would imagine the average telephone repair technician would not be too concerned about the demise of telegrams.... This is the way the world is and while personally painful, if we get too mired in anger and resistance we may find ourselves the next victim. The key is realism and flexibility, surely?
gb hill
Veteran
There is no forseeable future in this country. On the news today it was told most college graduates can't get a job so their being forced to move back home with mom & dad. This is sad! To me this is tens of thousands of hard earned $$'s saved by the parents thrown away. Next Tues. night Pres. Obama will adress the nation stating 34 thousand more troops will be sent to Afghanistan. Many will die & for what reason? They already say we can't afford the war. Obama is going to Copenhagen & if he signs the new treaty that will break the U.S. We will be funding the worlds crap (more than we are now) & the UN will put in place such environmental restrictions that businesses will in no way build here. They won't be able to afford to. Thats why India & China told Obama to stick that Copenhagen treaty up his a$$. They know the deal!
Al Patterson
Ferroequinologist
Well, you could pump gas a a Speedway/SuperAmerica, and I think Teradata and Wright/Patterson may still be hiring.
Chriscrawfordphoto
Real Men Shoot Film.
What a lot of people who keep saying that American workers need to be 'competitive' don't understand or won't admit is that American workers can NEVER compete with low wage foreign workers. Look, in China they make 25 cents an hour and in Mexico they make $10 a day. Its against the law in the United States to pay such low wages, and rightly so. The legal minimum wage now is half the real cost of living, which is why we have so many people going hungry in what is supposedly the richest country in the world. Disgraceful.
The parasite class in this country won't be happy until the USA is like Mexico: A wealthy country whose people are dirt poor and starving because 2% of the population owns 99% of the wealth. That's not an exaggeration either, Mexico really does have that kind of wealth distribution/concentration and the country is NOT poor. It is the 3rd richest country in the Americas (after the USA and Canada). Despite that, millions of Mexicans have risked death and arrest to sneak into the USA because their country has been sucked dry by their parasitic rulers. I honestly believe that in my lifetime Americans will be the wetbacks of Canada.
For those not familiar with the term, Wetback is an American racial slur for Mexicans. It refers to the fact that many of them sneak into the USA by wading across the Rio Grande, a river that forms part of the US/Mexico border. I can see the day when Americans are illegally emigrating to Canada in search of jobs, food, and health care, and Canadians are calling us a nasty name like 'wetback' out of fear that we'll take their jobs as Mexicans are sometimes accused of doing in the US.
Resistance is EXACTLY what's needed, before its too late.
The parasite class in this country won't be happy until the USA is like Mexico: A wealthy country whose people are dirt poor and starving because 2% of the population owns 99% of the wealth. That's not an exaggeration either, Mexico really does have that kind of wealth distribution/concentration and the country is NOT poor. It is the 3rd richest country in the Americas (after the USA and Canada). Despite that, millions of Mexicans have risked death and arrest to sneak into the USA because their country has been sucked dry by their parasitic rulers. I honestly believe that in my lifetime Americans will be the wetbacks of Canada.
For those not familiar with the term, Wetback is an American racial slur for Mexicans. It refers to the fact that many of them sneak into the USA by wading across the Rio Grande, a river that forms part of the US/Mexico border. I can see the day when Americans are illegally emigrating to Canada in search of jobs, food, and health care, and Canadians are calling us a nasty name like 'wetback' out of fear that we'll take their jobs as Mexicans are sometimes accused of doing in the US.
Resistance is EXACTLY what's needed, before its too late.
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