studio|detro

I’m following a few photographers online. As new names and beautiful images pop-up, I’m making lists to track back to those websites, too. The two most common things I see among these fellow photographers are as follows:

• they vary widely on copyright practices {a very interesting topic to pick up later}.
• they almost never are the sole income earner of thier family on photography alone.

Photographers seem to operate as such as a “sidecar” job.

I recently ran across the name Angela Drury in a podcast I listen to … she was mentioned as a photographer and associated in conversation with a certain process in photoshop. Looking at her search results, I found her fine art/children portrait photograph website; and also her day job via LinkedIn. Angela works as a Customer Support Manager at Adobe.

I’m referencing this one individual as a general example for what seems to be a general rule. Check out her site, the photographs are pleasant and thought-provoking.

Why isn’t photography an income earning profession? Has it ever been?

A podcast that often visits this topic is Brooks Jensen’s LensWork Podcast on Photography and the Creative Process. He references gallery prices and gallery sales relating to independent income in this audio file. He speculates that really expensive prints belong to photographers that make their living doing something else. Interesting. This turns simple supply and demand logistics up on one end – lots of supply, but no demand at such a high cost.

I wonder if low cost is the answer. My own photography is priced as low as I can get it. I wonder if that’s a great idea or not, I have to work really hard just to replace equipment (with the digital age, generally things got more expensive, not less!). And I am working as a part-time photographer myself. There is no way what I’m making starting out could begin to support me and G financially!

This topic too will have to be picked up later for further discourse … lots to think about, and no easy answer!

Don’t you feel like you can just wait for an answer to show up (note the tie-in with the photograph)? Let someone else work out the details and keep photographing on yourself …

Maybe it can be a similar case to the infinite monkey theorum (a monkey hitting keys at random on a typewriter keyboard for an infinite amount of time will almost surely type a particular chosen text, such as the complete works of William Shakespeare) “disproven” by the world wide web and blogs like mine. So, no matter how many photographs are taken by any number of people, a few well composed photographs will have recognized value!