There are two interesting posts on Conscentious, titled “if everybody can be a photographer”, part 1 and part 2. Although, Joerg Colberg, the author, has a good start, I think that he slips quite a few times.
- Writers share exactly the same experience. If lots of people want to be photographers, even more would like to be writers or journalists. The school system puts much more emphasis on writing skills than visual arts, this means that there are a much more people who are proficient in literature than people who are proficient with photography. How many people know who was Shakespeare? How many people know who was Henri Cartier-Bresson? You get my point.
- Knowing how to take a good photograph, doesn’t make anyone a pro. What makes people “pros” is waking up, doing the job and doing it right even if they don’t like that particular assignment. Basic technical skills are just the base that’s needed to build a profession.
- Prices of photography are going down, but I wouldn’t say that there is someone guilty of it. At a certain point it could be wise to accept that the figure of the photographer might become as obsolete as a the people charging money to write letters for people who are illiterate: when everyone can read, write and owns a pen, they just disappear. Doesn’t matter that their letters were “better”.
- Established photographers who are undercut from young guys offering a similar job for less money. The problem afflicts everyone who has a job subject to the “market economy”: engineers, web designers, programmers, cooks, travel guide authors, plumbers, musicians…
Go out, take your photos and don’t feel guilty of doing so. If “pros” can’t establish and keep their own market it’s their problem.
“It all comes down to risk, again and again: if you risk coming out, making pictures that aren’t good, you might discover something in a photograph that’s the key, the very doorway to your own interest”.
– Joel Meyerowitz
India, the new myth, a collective fiction in which anything was possible, a fable rivalled only by the two other mighty fantasies: money and God.
–Salman Rushdie
There are different things that bring me to believe that copyright is overrated in our society:
- In eastern societies the influence of Confucius replaces the influence of Aristotle. Copying someones’ works or thoughts, according to their view, is not stealing their ideas but acknowledging their mastership and creativity. Unluckily our cultural model is dominant in the world. I wouldn’t mind a change.
- All the recent fuss about the glass negatives that should have been Ansel Adam’s (and worth 200 million $), but turned out to be from some guy named Earl, therefore worth the 45$ paid at the garage sale. So it looks like the same photo is worth different prices according to who is the author.
- The “right to your own image”. Photons come from the sun, hit you, are reflected back in different directions, some hit my camera. In which way do people think they own those photons? The truth is that this approach has killed street photography in continental Europe.
- The record industry: these blokes are crying that “hometaping is killing business” since the ’70s, thought that burning CDs is evil, copying mp3 even worse. You get fined if you do it and get caught. These guys are stinking rich. Thanks to copyright.
Now, probably it isn’t a good idea to abolish it, but I seriously start thinking that some things have gone to far. I need to look better into Creative Commons.
Photography is a form of communication. You can discuss about its’ structure, rules, ways to deliver a message to the receiver. Seldom people remember that you first need something to communicate: an event, a mood, a reflection of reality.