Monument Valley
In the current issue of PDN (you did get it, don’t you?), Publisher Lauren Wendle has a great piece. It starts off by mentioning the closing of the doors of industry institutions Popular Photography and American Photo. These giants of our industry going away was quite the emotional blow and to some, the harbinger of bad days to come. Then she goes on to site some darn important facts that all of us need to grasp. She starts by quoting Farhad Manjoo of The New York times who writes, “Snap (makers of the app Snapchat) is betting on a “long-term trend: the rise and eventual global dominance of the visual culture.” I quote her, “Images are now not only to document the world but to communicate. That communication has no language barriers: Photography is truly becoming the international language we use to “talk” to each other–Manjoo’s article asserts the now we “speak in pictures.” It’s estimated that 1.2 trillion pictures will be taken in 2017, a 9 percent increase over 2016, and photography revenue in 2016 hit $10.5 billion.”
Personally, I see this as only one thing … photography is more important than ever as a means of telling our stories. At the same time, the conventional means we have to tell that story are evolving and if you’re not evolving with it, you’ll go the way of the dinosaurs. Ya, many of those photos were taken with devices like the iPhone but when it comes to making a living from your camera, it doesn’t require thousands of images, just one, the good one, the best one, the one the client wants to pay for. Do you have in you that one, that right one? I see oped pieces like this as good news and call to arms to get working and get working more productively. There is lots of disappointing news bombarding us these days. But when you look on the bright side, there is lots of good news if you seek it out. That’s what the numbers reveal!