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A less literal selfie. Selfies are a huge part of photography today: but there’s no business model here. And the underlying reason is inextricably linked to why we find photography appealing in the first place.

The game is changing, yet again – faster than ever. In today’s post I’d like to address the current state of play of the industry, and where I see it moving in the next year or two. Unlike just about every other industry, most of photography is unique in that there are no real benefits to scale anymore – even if you are a creative design house, there are good reasons to have a larger team such as specialisation. But instead we are seeing larger studios cut staff and run lean, and production houses giving way to collectives who band together as required for projects, but do not carry an aggregate P&L. Blogging has become an industry, though saturated. And the lack of regulation and standards is once again affecting all of us in the long run. Is there hope in dark corners? Perhaps, but we’re going to have to be brave, masochistic and resourceful to take advantage of it. I’ve broken it down by category for ease of analysis; usually multiple categories apply.

Camera manufacturers

Canikon et. al., I’m looking at you. Innovate or die: that’s basically it. You probably have a few more years of momentum sustained by the existing user base that you can probably string along with one or two more minor refreshes and some lenses every year, but this isn’t going to be enough in the long run. In fact, the only things saving you now are embedded users and fortunately ultimate image quality in small formats still goes to the DSLR, but the latter is a small market. Sony is starting to cannibalise your market by being price-agressive, and then once people are locked in, things are going to get expensive. It’s a shame, because my recent experience with the low end products shows (specifically, the D5500) that it’s possible to both innovate and get the ergonomic and photographic parts of the camera right in a small, cheap, light body. But if marketing then fails to follow through, it’s all wasted. The disruptive manufacturers like Sony and Fuji need to sustain the momentum: being aggressive isn’t enough. Proper quality control and after-sales support will be key to long term staying power and building brand loyalty.

Lens manufacturers

Of all the hardware companies, these are in the strongest positions – Zeiss and Sigma specifically – because they have much lower margin pressure than the camera makers, much higher barriers to entry of competition, and can serve a large user base with the same design simply by offering different mounts. The abundance of mounts helps too, since the camera makers are scrambling to fill holes or keep up with demand or deliver consistency. It’s a good thing that these companies are doing their best to keep up with the performance potential of the current generation of cameras and accommodate future resolution increases; the camera makers themselves have skewed focus far too much towards the bodies, which are more complex and expensive to develop but have a shorter shelf life. If I was in the camera business, I’d want to be here.

Hardware startups

Much the same as last year: access to crowdfunding has lead to many little projects being announced (Konost, TinyMos, etc.) that never really took off. Even access to large funding is no guarantee of success (Lytro). Being disruptive or niche is one thing; not properly engaging the photographic community to help them understand why they’d want to buy one is quite another. There’s no point in making something so different it no longer feels or works like a camera, or requires so many compromises that they land up outweighing any potential benefits. I think there’s certainly interesting technology afoot – Lytro and Light being the two leaders here – but I don’t see these going mainstream with an independent product because the support infrastructure isn’t there. I also don’t see them going mainstream because the main manufacturers are simply too conservative. The innovation needs to continue; we are reaching the end of the line in the current design/usage paradigm, and incremental improvements aren’t going to sustains sales in a broader market (beyond hardcore enthusiasts and pros) that’s getting both increasingly saturated and not necessarily needing or wanting any ‘more’.

Software

Adobe needs competition, desperately. Their subscription model is something I initially opposed, but feel makes sense now given it is a) no longer that expensive if you don’t need the whole Creative Suite, and b) should theoretically give them more resources for more frequent updates if they did their math correctly. However, it also puts them under pressure to push updates at the expense of stability; the last Lightroom fiasco, for instance. Broken workflow is a massive pain for pros, and a frustration for amateurs. It is not the way to build customer loyalty. It’s also clear that dedicated small teams can do a much better job with certain things – Kolor/AutoPano for stitching, for instance – than tools that may not be given much in the way of resources or priority at a larger company. The Kalpanika Sigma to DNG batch converter is another good example – it leaves me wondering why Sigma did not at least offer something similar (or buy up that code) to make their product more attractive to a wider audience.

Accessories

The standard stuff has long been saturated; when was the last time we saw any innovation in say the tripod or head market? The customisation market is booming, on the other hand – straps, cases, covers, buttons, whatever – the total cost of which can be significant even in proportion to the original camera. And then there’s the adaptor market: it’s going to get even more crowded as more mirrorless cameras are released and market share grows further. We recently saw the launch of the first AF Nikon to Sony E adaptor; I’m sure others will follow for other mounts. Quality control with adaptors is still suspect though sooner or later one of the big boys will realise there’s money here and tolerances that can only be achieved with more expensive production equipment. If anything, a lens maker should be the first in line to offer compatible adaptors to other mounts because it would broaden the market for their own product. Better to cannibalise your own sales and recover something in the process than lose it completely to the competition.

Photographers – still

The only segments here that aren’t experiencing a serious contraction are the wedding, aerial and VR shooters. Even then, price pressure is starting to build as the market gets more competitive with increasing hardware saturation. Commercial studios are finding they no longer have the production budgets to support large operations; the lone ranger with partners seems to be the only long term model, and even then, profitability is mostly thinning too. There will always remain room at the high end, but nothing has changed: it’s hard fought and heavily defended. As for news and documentary, with the exception of some agencies like Magnum and VII, we’re probably witnessing the start of what has already occurred for stock photography: it’s going to be crowdsourced and mostly unprofitable. Even Magnum’s coverage of the Paris attacks seemed, well, hurried, and not really up to their usual standards. Between axed photojournalists, a reader/consumer base who doesn’t care about quality but only wants instant gratification, and a higher chance of somebody in the crowd getting a shot – the golden days are over. The general trend is more content, faster, and quality takes a back seat. I still find this ironic considering proliferation of images should theoretically also raise awareness of good/bad…

Videographers

In the next year or so, video production is likely to follow the same path as stills: the lag is because it’s taken the barriers of entry some time to catch up with photography, but it will happen. Price pressure, quality sacrifices, etc. If you are in this market: prepare now. And make sure you have a contingency plan if you’re an aerial specialist and drones suddenly become much less easy to operate, which is only an accident or a matter of time away.

Education

An increasing interest in photography over the last few years has also brought an increasing demand for education, though it still remains a very small portion of the overall pie. It will continue to do so because education requires effort, and that’s much harder work than just buying something. I have noticed an increasing number of photographers offering some form of education or switching over to education entirely; the problem is once again a lack of quality control; good photographers are not necessarily good teachers and vice versa. I’ve heard no end of complaints form my own students about other workshops in which the teachers did not actually photograph – possibly out of fear or being upstaged by their students – or just acted as tour guides; that’s not education! You cannot ask a student to do something you yourself cannot do; you do not deserve to teach if that is the case. Personally, I’ve cut down on the number of workshops I do simply because I don’t have the time to plan and execute them to the level I would like.

Blogging/reviews

I’ve left this one til last, because it’s a bit of a minefield. There seems to be little differentiation by the audience between bloggers, photographers, reviewers, and otherwise. Good photographers who don’t write well get marginalised, but try to stay in the game anyway. Reviewers mostly cannot photograph and therefore produce opinions that are not valid because they do not represent actual-use scenarios. Furthermore, there is an overlapping group who are paid mouthpieces and not at all objective; I know this because offers have been made more than once to me (which I rejected out of editorial integrity, and because I don’t earn my living from this site or doing reviews) and other names were mentioned during the conversation. Yet the internet is such that it you shout loud enough, whatever is being shouted is believed to be true. This is dangerous.

I find myself in a tricky situation with this site. Every other site which has anything approaching my traffic is monetized and pretty much the sole means of income for the proprietor/owner. Sites are increasingly advertising-heavy, or subscription-only. The latter change comes whens the proprietors realise that the time and effort being expended is net-negative or not paying the bills. I am fortunate to have other work to allow me to write because I enjoy it and because I wish to say the difficult things that have to be said – but the internet is also so increasingly entitled and full of unpleasant individuals that remaining free and fully independent is an intellectually unsustainable model, too. My catch 22 is that the only stakeholder deriving value is the readership: I’m certainly not doing any of the manufacturers favours when I find flaws in their product. Yet if I make this subscription-only, there goes any hope of sufficient visibility that things might change. See the challenge?

At a higher level, there’s a disturbing trend going on which doesn’t make much sense. In every case, the price to the consumer is increasing – yet the price paid to the supplier is decreasing. Cameras cost more, lenses cost more, actual gains are smaller, development cycles are shorter, products are released with known flaws. Professionals are being paid less, dealer margins are being squeezed. So where is the money going? It’s not into R&D, because innovation is honestly pretty thin on the ground compared to other industries. It isn’t into manufacturer profits, because those are pretty thin compared to other industries, too. It may well be into shareholders’ pockets for clients; savings on advertising budgets go back to the bottom line. However, you have to spend money to make money: customers won’t buy something they don’t know about or don’t find attractive.

This has probably progressed far beyond the initial scope of the discussion, but as the income distribution gap continues to increase, professional photographers and dealers are going to become an increasingly endangered species. If I sound more negative now than during my previous assessment of affairs, it’s because I really feel that photography as a whole needs a massive systemic change in innovation and education to value content at a wider level. In my own small way I will continue to try to defend the fort for as long as I possible. MT

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