Originally Posted by navcom
You can take 10,000,000 pictures, but if you always do what you always did, you will always get what you always got.
Great line, there, that should be the quote of the day.
Awesome thread.
You know, I think there are many pro photographers who simply love to teach, are good at teaching and in the hundreds of people they lead through workshops who will never take a great photo, they will find a couple who have a talent and/or who are willing to work hard to better themselves at photography and the pro will derive great satisfaction from helping those individuals evolve.
Maybe I could compare them to a fly-fishing guide, a little of which I know something about. I made a living at guiding so I guess you could have called me a pro in some sense of the word. Some of the people I guided will never become good flyfishermen for whatever reasons but even those people usually had great days because they were out of their daily grind, were outdoors in beautiful surroundings and were on rivers, it's pretty durn hard to have a bad day when you're on a river, especially on the kind of rivers I guided on. When these people had a great day, I had a great day. Every now and then I would get a client who maybe was a noobie at flyfishing and casting but who had an innate sense of fishing and who took directions easily, asked the right questions and learned quickly and these were very very satisfying days for me. I can't imagine it would be any different for a pro photographer. Just because a guy is a pro photographer and knows everything under the sun about photography will not make him successful providing tours and workshops if he isn't a "people" person and can't impart his knowledge to a noobie in a way that the student can understand and appreciate.
I would love to go on a tour to Puerto Rico and photograph birds and other exotic stuff, I wish I could afford something like that. Not to become the next National Geographic phenom, I will never be a threat to those guys, but to get away from my daily grind, to see some different part of the world and have a small chance to take a great photo for my personal satisfaction. It would still be outa my reach to just go on my own, but if I did I would probably wander around for days and probably not come close to the potential such a trip could provide. I bet there are thousands of guys like me especially since DSLR's have come down to the prices regular Joe's can afford.
Sure, there will be more competition since more and more people can afford the new technologies but that's a good thing, competition is always a good thing. The guys who can provide the good shots on a regular basis reliably will have their jobs and the ones who can teach will make lots and lots of money teaching all the noobies flooding the market with their cool new cameras.
I see this whole thing as nothing but wonderful opportunities for the talented guys who before couldn't afford competent gear and with great products finally becoming more affordable for the masses, more of these people will have a chance to share their visions. Many will spend lots of money and never take anything but snapshots that possibly only they will think is "good" but what's wrong with that if it makes them happy? I'd much rather be around happy people.... even if I think their pictures suck.
:-)