Anyone who has shot professionally over the years has seen a drop in business (yes there are some exceptions). There are many reasons for this. Not only have film shooters seen a drop but so have digital shooters. WHY?

1. Instant feedback- with the advent of digital, even a shooter with limited talent could stay in the game. Instant digital feedback of the image gave the average shooter a chance to get the shot right with several attempts. In the film days, shooters like this could not get results and were eliminated from the pro ranks. Now, they become competition for the talented pros.

2. Digital cameras blurred the lines between 35mm cameras and medium format. This is important because in the film days, 35mm work was forbidden by a vast majority of publishers. It was very necessary to shoot medium or large format to stay in the game. Now, an inexpensive ($800) digital camera competes with all formats. These shooters, who were formerly eliminated from publication are now competing.

3. Excessive supply of shots- with so many new people able to compete, the market has become saturated with images. Publishers are swamped with shots. Several calendar companies have stopped accepting images from freelancers and are only accepting from stock agencies. This excess supply has reduced the price of images, making it more difficult for shooters to make a living.

4.Reduction of print media- Both magazines and calendars have seen a reduction in sales in the past 15 years as the Millennial generation has moved to electronic versions of media. Photographic demand by book publishers has waned as well.

5. TV stations refuse to pay photographers for their time/shots-- They seem to want these images for free. It represents the sentiment that photographs are worthless these days.

After shooting P67 for years and not being able to sell anything recently from it (unless getting an expensive scan done) I started shooting digital to stay in the game. Did that change things? Not really. Why? The problem was not that I was shooting film, it was that the market had changed for both film AND digital shooting.

You are absolutely RIGHT -- I was the only 'Freelance' surviving here in Brentwood, Essex ( England) now I am finished as well -- last ' Paid Job' was March 2016 and Editor refused to pay for pics and story saying they no longer pay for 'Freelance Contributions' and all my 6x7 FILM work went YEARS ago as all the companies using it went broke and my Agency sent back all my transparencies saying they no longer want 'Hard Copy' images. So now I am a 'Gainfully Un-employed Pensioner' relying on my British Government Pension. I lost all my local Council work as there was a 'Girl in the Office with a Nikon Coolpix' who did it free, local Schools all had a 'teacher with a Canon Digital' who took all the team photos, stage shows etc all FREE ans supplied all the local newspapers, and all the Theatrical Groups stopped using me as there was a 'member with a Digital Camera who would do it free'

Pentaxpete-- It is a sad state of affairs for sure. I gave up my business licence last December, as I was not getting enough sales to retain it. I used to travel quite a bit to build my stock of travel shots. Now I'm just not as inspired to do that, as I once was. I can take solace in the fact that I have had a lot of shots published from my 67 in the past.

Our society is changing and changing fast. Google translator has done away with a lot of highly qualified (but perhaps expensive) professional translators, Uber make a lot of taxi drivers join the unemployment queues, traditional B&Bs and even hotels lose out to Airbnb, and soon self-driving cars will put all kinds of chauffeurs out of their jobs. Alas, photographers are not alone in this regard.

Indeed. So true. I am glad that I was able to ride the tail end of the glory days of the photography business.

I'm sorry I missed them. I was too busy getting a BA and MA degrees in a subject I'll probably never get to use them in.

But if I may inject a bit of optimism in all this. I truly believe in the old adage, "what goes around, comes around." All this short-sighted behavior toward photography's gonna come back to bite folks one day, and they're gonna wish there were still some seasoned pros (and yes, amateurs) out there who could still pull things off. They're gonna miss the "picture post card" shots and those that looked like they just jumped from the pages of the National Geographic. And whether print media or web-based, there's still gonna be a need for news photos that "the girl over in filing" may not be able to handle.

I think Stock has pretty much gone down for the count, though, with all the microstocks out there. Which kinda makes me sick since I've spent a fair amount of the past 30 years building up a good set of stock images that I was hoping to market -- almost all of which are slides, many of them medium format, too. And I refuse to shoot for a microstock agency. I tried it for a while, and as strict as their editors were, you would think they all worked for NatGeo. They want me to bust my ass for a photo that I'll get pennies per sale on? I got tired of their nitpicking and just called it quits.

The one last bastion for photographers in my city is weddings. Here in Houston, when you mention "professional photographer," what you really mean to say is wedding photographer. It is still a thriving business here, cell phones notwithstanding. This is one area of photography where I just have zero interest in, however. Oh well.

I'm sorry I missed them. I was too busy getting a BA and MA degrees in a subject I'll probably never get to use them.

But if I may inject a bit of optimism in all this. I truly believe in the old adage, "what goes around, comes around." All this short-sighted behavior toward photography's gonna come back to bite folks one day, and they're gonna wish there were still some seasoned pros (and yes, amateurs) out there who could still pull things off. They're gonna miss the "picture post card" shots and those that looked like they just jumped from the pages of the National Geographic. And whether print media or web-based, there's still gonna be a need for news photos that "the girl over in filing" may not be able to handle.

I think Stock has pretty much gone down for the count, though, with all the microstocks out there. Which kinda makes me sick since I've spent a fair amount of the past 30 years building up a good set of stock images that I was hoping to market -- almost all of which are slides, many of them medium format, too. And I refuse to shoot for a microstock agency. I tried it for a while, and as strict as their editors were, you would think they all worked for NatGeo. They want me to bust my ass for a photo that I'll get pennies per sale on? I got tired of their nitpicking and just called it quits.

The one last bastion for photographers in my city is weddings. Here in Houston, when you mention "professional photographer," what you really mean to say is wedding photographer. It is still a thriving business here, cell phones notwithstanding. This is one area of photography where I just have zero interest in, however. Oh well.

What I also meant to say: we - the general public - seem to be content with accepting lower quality and poorer service in return for lower prices. In my childhood (the 60'ies) petrol stations were manned and someone filled the tank of your car and wiped the windscreen for you, there were both a bus driver and a ticket collector on board buses and people felt safe, local train stations were manned and not devoid of life and people felt reasonably safe there too. And yes, newspapers employed proper, skilled photographers, whereas they now rely on mobile phone images provided by members of the public or murky screen shots from CCTV. Banks had real people manning the counters in stead of the ATMs of today. "Self-service" is the the new black, even though it is not "service" at all. We even let amateurs entertain us in stead of professional artists: talent shows like X-factor give us Paul Potts and other "stars".
So the "Ryan Air" philosophy prevails everywhere and a good, high-resolution photograph taken by a skilled photographer with a medium format film camera is overkill in most cases ... The only exception seems to be weddings - because then for once there is no spending limit ;-)

Absolutely! There is a trend which seems world wide, away from quality and toward mediocrity. An example is calendar companies, with their willingness to sacrifice the quality of film for the lower quality of digital. By this I mean digital has to be modified to look right from a RAW file. Even JPGs have to be modified to attain a quality look. I have seen numerous digital shots in calendars that had highlights blown out or colors that just didn't look real. I have seen many skies in published digital shots that had a cyan cast to them. Publishers could save a bit of money and increase their profit margin by having shooters use digital. So now the publisher would not have to scan the film to publish. The photographer would have to supply a print ready image which forced the shooter to buy digital equipment and abandon film.

Agree that stock shooting is dead. I have 6000 6x7 slides just sitting around waiting for a buyer but no such luck. Even scanning them and trying to market them as digital has not panned out. As far as busting your ass for a photo then having them pay you pennies for it--- I can sure relate to that!! I went to the tropics at least 20 times over the past 29 years trying to acquire stock of places that were not shot professionally, so that I had an edge over the competition. I remember being miserably hot and mosquito bitten on more than one occasion. I sell very little of that work now. However I did enjoy going to the tropics as a consolation.

On a recent trip to The International Center of Photography in NYC, a majority of the current exhibits were digital clips on little screens apposed to the traditional still prints from film or digital.

Pretty sad going to a photography museum to look at crappy iPhone clips on a wall mounted screen, with headphones to listen to the audio. I guess doing a single image enlargement and some sort of mounting/framing is too much effort or not necessary these days??

Other than some older b&w prints the museum was not worth the trip for my wife or myself. However future exhibits may be different, but I doubt it as the museum seemed to have a lot of schools kids visiting it and their attention span is limited. A lot of people don't seem to be interested in looking at printed still images anymore than I'm interested in viewing video clips from a phone.

Phil.

Phil-- What you saw was more evidence of convenience superseding quality. It could be a generational thing, I don't know.

My only hope is that publishers will once again accept film for their publications. With the resurgence of medium format film shooting, that is a possibility.

What a Co-incidence !!! I got my Family to find that NYC Photography Museum and was SO Disappointed with what I saw --- as you said '' Digital Images' in digital frames of subjects i could not understand ! I was expecting REAL PHOTOS as you have so many famous photographers in NYC but NO! --- My Boy was annoyed we had to walk a long way to find it then another long way back to get the New York Big Bus !

On a previous trip we went to Rochester, NY and the George Eastman Museum. Now that was well worth the long side-trip, they had some superb prints including many Cibachrome that were jaw dropping to look at. They also had many old film bodies on display, including various Pentax's.

Phil.

Just for your information, there is a photography center in Tucson, AZ on the University of Arizona campus. It usually displays urban black and white work. I find it a bit disappointing in its lack of diversity of its displays.
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