|
Forums >
General Industry >
Do your profession a favor....Improve!
just read a thread about a pro loosing a paid job. its time for some of you great long time professionals to open your eyes and acknowledge. here is an innocent example: first there was html and notepad to create websites...then came out zillion of other mark up languages, plus css, plus database languages, plus editor softwares, plus flash, plus scripting, plus graphic softwares. at first, web design companies were hiring teams as coders and designers. then people came out who can code and design at the same time. then the fact came out that how far they can design and code. each became a profession with lots of branches. and business people prefer people with skills more than one or two... and instead of paying a company 30K to build a website they hire young ones and get it done for half the price if not less. and the quality you may wonder. same. period. what happened to the only html guy who believed there will always be clients. no more. still many websites start with html in brackets. we all remember and respect. but no more jobs for html only. beware of the young open minds you all. some are the same age as your kids are . and they are create more than you could have ever imagined. and many are your neighbours. there is one thing all pro's have against the more skilled that is experience but give it a year or two and they'll be right next to you applying or asking for the same job for less $$$. no more bs cause the quality is same if not better. you have two choices: - improve your skill, style, ability, knowledge and always stay ahead of anybody right behind because you are already a experienced professional and have ready networks and clients. - or stay still, do the same each and every year but invest in other things and quit stay still and you'll vanish...not a year or two maybe...but 5 max I say. save yourself and your profession. dont be shy to try. there is no shame in trying. Apr 12 06 11:21 pm Link interesting topic I do see alot of photographers who say they are professionals and have been in the game for 10 years, 20 years, 30 years even 40years, and I look at some of thier work and Im like hmm ok.... I've been at photography for a year now and by 5,10,15, or 20 years.. I plan to get better each passing year. Not stay at the same level I was when I started. Guess some people are "ok" with being "just ok" at what they do. Then again some don't care... Apr 12 06 11:38 pm Link pro's are supposed to keep the bar high...if they dont someone else will come, take the bar, bash them first and set it higher. Apr 12 06 11:54 pm Link Wait. I still use notepad. Apr 12 06 11:58 pm Link VirtuaMike wrote: haha...and I hate coding Apr 13 06 12:06 am Link Koray wrote: could you be more specific. I understand the html part, but maybe you could apply this to let's say....photography? Apr 13 06 12:46 am Link KM von Seidl wrote: I prefer not because I was thinking about models and stylists to. Apr 13 06 01:04 am Link Koray wrote: so when you say for photographers to improve, you're referring to technology, correct? Apr 13 06 01:10 am Link KM von Seidl wrote: not really...I'm trying to make sure old timers will still be there to impress. its not aboout tech its about standing out as you wish to stand out remembering that there really is a bar for high tech people or old timers. Apr 13 06 01:18 am Link Photography is art. There are a lot of images that don't impress me favorably selling like hotcakes. I won't tell you where to find them because slamming professional photographers wedding dress pictures isn't my thing... Well hmmm, I guess you could find them on your own in Modern Bride which I subscribe to so I can analyze their images. They have a great mix of fabulous and garbage images all well shuffled. Can you imagine Grandma Moses telling Picasso that he needed to learn to paint? Really bad photographers can get work if they are good marketers. Good photographers can't get work if they are really bad marketers. That's life. Apr 13 06 01:32 am Link I think Koray is trying to talk about Vision. Photographers need to have a Vision. Not a "look" or a "style". Vision. A clear goal about how they create images and what those images communicate. Lots of old pros lack vision. Youngsters with a fire in their belly and a clear vision of what they want to accomplish can be a sight to behold. Some folks have some vision - but it needs to be honed, refined, re-defined, etc... Koray is saying that you have to keep working at it. -steve http://www.stevennoreyko.com/ Apr 13 06 01:37 am Link so two more things to improve...marketing and vision. see I'm learning. Apr 13 06 01:42 am Link I wish my vision was better. I hate trusting the autofocus all the time. I wonder if I focus on having good vision will I be as good a photographer as Picasso was a good painter? Or am I being too abstract? Apr 13 06 01:45 am Link ArtisticDigitalImages wrote: hmm abstract..more to learn about Apr 13 06 01:51 am Link I have the utmost respect for the guys that sit in a studio all day and create beautiful portraits, BUT....You're getting old and you bore me. If that offends you, maybe you need to take action. Re-discover that spark that made you love photography in the first place. That and only that will defeat your obsolesence. Create images that you are truly proud of and anything that follows is icing on the cake. and always ALWAYS choose action over passivity. Apr 13 06 01:56 am Link im new and i think u are talkin about me im 23yrs old and my goal is not 2 get better every yr its to get better everyday .. i shoot almost every day ... and im comin ..in the words of NOTORIOUS BIG " dont sleep on me homie, i bring nightmares to reality" HAHHAHAH (evil laugh) Apr 13 06 01:57 am Link just to add more flames....html, css, .net, xml, flash, photoshop, notepad, frontpage, etc, who cares?...none of it matters except your final product. Fancy tools don't make you an artist. Give a pro and an am a polaroid and 10 shots then look at the results. The technology changes all the time, but it can not replace your eye or your vision. Anything you can do in photoshop I can do with an enlarger(it just takes 10 times longer), it's the original image that matters. When you press that button, you're capturing something. Is it interesting? Apr 13 06 02:12 am Link Actually technology does have a significant impact on web work especially when it comes to functionality. Design is just a separate component. For photography, I feel that vision needs to be continuously refined. The photographer that says he's gotten to where he wants to be has given up. No rest. Apr 13 06 02:26 am Link dncphotos wrote: I had an interesting thought about this while looking at some "professional" images that were total crap done by a photographer that had been in the business for 20+ years. 20 years ago the most important skill for a photographer was equipment, bulky cameras, dark room development, and huge ackward expenseive lights. Mastering the mechanics of the technology was the only requirement to call yourself a photographer, and the girth of this technology along with the fear it invoke hindered many from joining the field. Now we live in the inexpensve digital photoshop age. everything is cheaper and less costly. So use younger photographers skip years of mastering darkrooms and go straight to art, angles, lighting, and like magic minute after each shoot we can see the result on a huge screen find our mistakes correct them and improve at speeds unimaginable 20 years ago. Photography now moves and computer speed not chemical speed. Skill that took years to aquire in darkrooms take months in photoshop. Practicing with angles and light that cost expensise film and hours of development take only minutes of download and a set of rechargeable batteries. Whoa unto you old photographer that think your skill set acquired 20 years ago and not improved since will keep you competative agianst us who charge less. Doctors, Engineers, FBI, and soldiers alike have to keep up with the technological advances in thier fields, the oppertunities this allows, and the new skill these will require. Why do photographers think they can be left behind. Apr 13 06 02:35 am Link Subsociety Studios wrote: Let's see you batch process 50 similars having the enlarger remove the same blemish in each one without your intervention while you watch your favorite TV show in your well lit darkroom. Oops, sorry, you need Photoshop for that kind of action. Apr 13 06 02:36 am Link Totally off-topic, but if you want to give the model a MM credit for this: https://www.modelmayhem.com/pic.php?pic … e92b0aeaae Courtnee's MM # is 39251. Fun stuff. Apr 13 06 02:40 pm Link Subsociety Studios wrote: I dispute that. I've been doing darkroom prints exclsuively for 40 years, but I also know enough about photoshop to know that it can do things that aren't possible in the darkroom. Call that an opinion if you want. I think it's so obvious that's it's not even worth debating. Apr 13 06 03:42 pm Link Personally, I don't think the technology matters. An image is a composition. If you're good at composition, you can be a good photographer whether you shoot film or digital. Lighting hasn't changed that much over the last 20, 30, or 50 years. Hot lights are a little less convenient, but hardly an element in determining your photographic capability. And there have been labs to do your processing for at least for the last 100 years. Digital tools do not a photographer make, but lowering the cost has put the tools into many more gifted hands. And it's those gifted individuals that move the art forward regardless of the medium. Apr 13 06 04:01 pm Link im gonna go out on a limb and suggest it was my posting the OP is reffering too.. while you took great care in constructing your advice...the issue is not about mine or anyone elses skill..it wasn't about losing a job, its was about losing a client.. it was about a shift in paradigms.. its about traditional paying clients wanting and getting talent for free... no amount of honing my skill is going to save me a client that has found a bottomless well of free talent.. i am not going to stand in line to work for free, so someone else can profit from my work...but theres an endless stream that will... Apr 13 06 04:24 pm Link VirtuaMike wrote: No it dosen't. I can think of two [great] photographers on this site alone who use cameras that were available to your great-grandfather. It's the carpenter, not the hammer. Apr 13 06 07:29 pm Link Melvin Moten Jr wrote: and mine too, since Melvin introduced it to me over a year ago.... Apr 13 06 07:32 pm Link Sometimes I get a real chuckle about the technology geeks. It's sort of like the shooter who has to have the latest, newest gear, the cameras with all of the bells and whistles. One and only one thing counts for the working pro, that's whether or not his/her images sell. It doesn't matter if they are liked on this or any other web forum, it doesn't matter if friends love or hate them, it doesn't matter if they win awards. Do they sell, that's the only thing which matters. Personally, I shot and developed my first film roll at age 12 and I never stopped, I'm now 67 and still shooting. In about 1993 I became interested in going onto the internet, so I bought some software to help me build a web site. I'm still using it; no bells, no whistles, no flash, just 'what you see is what you get software'. My stuff sold. I still use the same software on my site and my stuff still sells. Before closing my studio and retiring from commercial photography, my stuff sold as magazine illustrations, small product work and ads, to the best of my knowledge, I never lost a sale because I had no 'flash' on my web site or didn't use the newest camea on the market. As for imaging skill, I agree with you, those who do not grow on a consistent basis will eventually fail. But that has nothing to do with technology, it has to do with creativity. With 13 year old technology on my web site, my figurative work still sells on an international basis continues to be exhibited on an international basis. Again, for a working pro, only one thing matters, does the work sell? That has to do with the 'eye', not with technology. BTW, I hate 'notepads', I prefer to use a yellow legal tablet. Apr 13 06 09:28 pm Link Well, I'm still not sure what this thread is about. some old-time pros are boring sticks in the mud. okay. they might have been boring when young. And I see a lot of new photographers who are boring too. so? some old time pros are losing jobs to up and comers. well okay, that might happen when people are willing to work for less. that doesn't mean that the new folks are better, it just might mean the client is a cheap ass mother-F@#$. And of course the profession is changing and who knows, in 10 years, maybe no one other than a cherished few make a living as a professional photographer. The part about the thread that bugs, is this old timer vs. young turk theme that's running throughout. old or young, tech saavy or luddite, it's about craft, artistry and passion that makes our work memorable or not. Apr 14 06 02:31 am Link Interesting forecast, but I have to say that I do not agree with you. I just can't see young inexperienced photographers with fancy equipment taking over the well paid gigs. It's fine and dandy to shoot whatever you feel like and say you're doing great work - but it's another thing to shoot for serious clients. Clients are demanding. They need certain things in their photographs and they are paying for the knowledge you have to deliver those things. I don't care how fancy a camera gets. When you run into a shoot requiring a specific feel/image/look and you don't know how to deliver it - you are losing your gig and word will spread that you are incompetent. This happens in the world of web programming too. It's not an accurate analogy. Once upon a time, there was just HTML. So notepad was A-okay. Now you have all sorts of crazy languages and even though many programs pre-script, you still need a fundamental understanding of them to troubleshoot problems - and believe me there are problems. That's where I believe experience comes in, just like with photography... I really don't think you need to worry. Your job is safe. The sky isn't falling. At least not any time soon. Apr 14 06 02:51 am Link Dave Krueger wrote: Lower cost tools and digital technology has made the turn around time image capture cost to where one can gain the experience in month that once took years. Apr 14 06 03:01 am Link MartinCoatesIV wrote: Hi Martin, Apr 14 06 03:25 am Link |
