Photographers chasing the holy grail of photography.
For as long as I can remember photographers have always been chasing new ways of doing things. New Ideas, new techniques, in fact anything new. This is obviously the way forward. After all if we all stood still and didn’t try to advance our craft. Where would we be?
Equipment manufactures and more recently software producers survive from this basic photographic need. Convince a photographer he or she can’t survive without your latest widget, and success is yours. The internet has increased our desire to have the latest. With thousands tuning in daily to web sites such as nikonrumours.com or canonrumours.com . In the hope that someday real soon the next great thing in photography will be released. Then of course you have the tens of thousands of photographers and would be photographers. Who chase the latest information from web instructors and teachers. Such as those to be found on kelbytraining.com
None of these things are bad. It just concerns me that, we are all spending to much time looking at ways to be like others. Instead of maybe looking at ways we can develop our own sense of identity. After all there can be no denying that Joe McNally is a highly talented image maker, who has for decades produced great images. The question is how many Joe McNally clones can the world accommodate? Sure we should as photographer look at what others are doing. But maybe we would be better off looking at what we’re doing.
A photographer recently related to me that he was a stock photographer. I asked what his specialty was. His somewhat vague reply revolved around his method of working. He visits the microstock sites. Checks out what is being downloaded the most. Then proceeds to clone those images. Not look for a different take on the subject. Just straight out clone the image. His thinking was that if it’s selling for others it will sell for him. Funny when I asked him how his stock income was going, I didn’t get a straight answer but if you believe in body language, then the answer was “not well”.
I recently saw a workshop for photographers being promoted. A successful photographer and publisher was going to give anyone who attended an insight into how to make a living photographing landscapes and self publishing books. Who wouldn’t want to do that. Just swooning around the country taking the occasional snap and making a healthy living. Sounds ideal doesn’t it. But I wonder just how many people can be in that market before it becomes over saturated. Just like the colours in so many landscape photos today. I wonder if the instructor was going to tell his followers about the very early mornings, late nights, heat, cold, wind, rain, travel expenses, isolation and other hardships that go with the job. Or just gve em the good stuff, because most will never do anything other than dream of reinventing themselves.

Was recently informed by an expert that as a stock photographer you should never photograph dogs or kittens. A couple days later this image of a bunch of Rottweiller puppies sold from our library for use in a children’s book. That same week one of the most successful stock photo libraries sent out a request for cute kitten photos. Masses of them. Seems cute pets are still in demand.