Originally posted by Dan Rentea I don't know if your friend is a photographer or not (if he is, it will be nice if you show us his portfolio so that we can learn something) but I was talking about success in photography, not about business in general.
Having a photography business like the one that Karl Taylor has is in my opinion a good example of a real business (or as I said, a successful one).
You can visit his website in the link from the above comment. Maybe then you will understand something from what I said.
Later edit. If you missed my point, then let me expain:
1. Becoming very good as a photographer helped him to become ambassador for Broncolor and Hasselblad
2. His skills and talent helped him getting big contracts with known and important clients
3. He builded an impressive studio so that he can approach any kind of demands from clients
4. He provided workplaces by hiring people
5. He's providing lots of quality (free and paid) content for photographers with his Youtube channel and with his training website
These things to me are a definition of a successful photographer and in the same time a real business.
I don't know if being commercially successful is the right meter to measure the value of a photographer.
Given the current pitiful condition of the publishing business, i'd rather say that SOME kind of photographer earn their worth in euros/dollars/whatever else. Notably high level advertising and fashion photographers.
The few masters of people/street/travel photography make the ends meet with workshops (and teaching in general).
High end fashion photographers work with FF and (when/if needed) with digital medium format (which IMHO isn't really medium format... but this is another story).
Those who do still life for catalogs and the like often use a digital FF camera (with a Schneider, Canon... or even Samyang tilt/shift lens).
I don't know people doing that anymore, but i guess that those using large format cameras with digital backs have to shoot images for high magnification (like billboards).
The last one I met, more than 10 years ago, was about to retire, claiming high cost of the backs, rather quick obsolescence, and low margins.
I purchased a couple of 8x10" lenses from him, before he moved to some spanish island...
I've done this kind of work in the eighties, and I still own more large format cameras than digital ones
I love cameras with movements, but I believe that today digital backs (still quite small in size for my taste) are for very specific use, and that large analog film has a substantial problem: cost/quality of scanning. You HAVE to provide the client a digital file, not a sheet of film!
Tethered backs have the big advantage of instant proofing, too.
So film is substantially dead for this kind of use, and I think I would be amazed by the percentage of published, well paid images shot with a digital back on a camera with movements. My take is that it would be much lower than 1%, but it's just gut feeling, I have no relationship with this kind of market since too long. My best guess is that those who do actually shoot this way are either using a modern Alpa, or any of the good old 6x9 bellows cameras.
Kind of a niche, I believe. Too small to say that it's the only real professional photography, I'm afraid