Closing The Circle Of Thought On “Has the Photo Market Been Irreversibly Altered?”

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Greg Lato added something on his blog shortly after my post “Has the Photo Market Been Irreversibly Altered?” that extended the topic in an interesting direction. For those that don’t read his blog, but read mine I thought you might find his post “Photography Times…They Are A Changing” of interest. Taking the chain of thought even further Jessica Grieves on her blog, in response to Greg’s thoughts, inquires from her readers what occupational background they’ve come from before pursuing photography as a more serious endeavor. See her blog entry “Internet Bubble“. So for those reading what is your background?

I posted a comment to her entry that was a little lengthy, but I’ll also copy it here…

“It’s great to see the progression of thought around my initial post and where it has been taken particularly in your blog entry. My focus was round the growing perception that photography isn’t anything special and that any monkey can do it. Hence a growing attitude that using imagery for free or for nearly nothing is acceptable.

Looking past that to Greg’s thoughts it’s an interesting read on things and I think it definitely has some truth to it. None-the-less even before the world of digital film photographers were often looked down on by painters and other artists. Photography on an artistic level has struggled to receive the same respect. So what does this have to do with your question?The techies that Greg has identified as the fast learners, are creative types whether they think of themselves in this fashion or not. Developing new code, applications, marketing programs, etc. takes a different type of thinking. Combining that with an underlying passion and competitive need to stay on top of technology you get what is now a broader pool of photographers.This strangely isn’t that far off from how many photographers of the last generation got into photography. I remember reading a story about Galen Rowell’s wife and how she got started in photography. As a photo editor she had a vision of what she wanted. No one could execute on the idea so she went out to get the shot herself. After teaching herself how to get the shot she eventually got it. The only problem was that her boss wouldn’t let her use it because it didn’t come from an outside source. She felt so strongly about the image being used as planned that she ended up quiting. Shortly after her boss wanted to use the image. Thus began her photographic career that led to her meeting Galen.

So to finally answer your question… I started out as a lab researcher in Genetics and later moved into web marketing. Currently I’m a web strategist where I get the opportunity to leverage my creativity in a slightly different way than I do when behind the camera.”

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