The Month of May - Comment

May was an uneasy month for the world of photography. Adobe's announcement that its professional software would no longer be available for purchase on a 'perpetual' basis but would instead need to be rented from them month-by-month caused waves of anger around the world to judge from the reaction of the online photographic community. Stop paying the rent and your software stops working and you lose access to any work previously produced. There's nothing intrinsically wrong with that model, I already rent Photoshop CS6 on an annual contract, but nevertheless in my view Adobe needs to re-examine the price point for single applications. Many photographers will only be interested in Photoshop and at £17.58 per month on the best value tariff, the break-even point versus purchasing the software comes after three years, after which and assuming you didn't previously expect to update every time Photoshop iterated, you will in future be paying a lot more to keep Photoshop on your computer.  Adobe's problem is many of its products are already developed to the point where customers often see no compelling reason to update more frequently than every once in a while. Adobe's rivals have been quick to capitalise on the unrest, with several offering special pricing for anyone jumping ship, conversion webinars and promises never to go down the rental route and one cheekily running a 'Welcome Adobe Customers' banner across its website.

Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer was next:

"Today, with cameras as pervasive as they are, there is no such thing really as professional photographers" - Yahoo event

Mayer subsequently took to Twitter and apologised to the professional photographers paying for Flickr Pro accounts, saying her statement had been worded terribly.

News of the premature announcement of the death of professional photography seemed to reach the owners of the Chicago Sun-Times, who promptly sacked their entire 28 person photography staff. Pictures will in future be provided by reporters using smart-phones. Alex Garcia, a staffer at the rival Chicago Tribune blogged:

"Reporters are ill equipped to take over. That’s because the best reporters use a different hemisphere of the brain to do their jobs than the best photographers. Visual and spatial thinking is very different than verbal and analytical thinking. Even if you don’t believe that bit of science, the reality is that visual reporting and written reporting will take you to different parts of a scene and hold you there longer. I have never been in a newsroom where you could do someone else’s job and also do yours well. Even when I shoot video and stills on an assignment, with the same camera, both tend to suffer. They require different ways of thinking."

Garcia is correct, only very rare individuals can both write well and create excellent photography and to attempt both simultaneously is near impossible.  The same mistake is being repeated across the newspaper and magazine industry with publishers responding to falling advertising revenues by lowering the quality of the product. It should come as no surprise when customers turn away.

News came yesterday that this year's Focus on Imaging trade show was the last, with the organisers pulling the plug after 25 years. Always a barometer of the state of the industry, both technologically and economically, it will be missed by many both for the opportunity to see new products and the always well attended presentations and demonstrations. Hopefully, a group of manufacturers will take the initiative and put together a new show. Nikon ran a very successful event for its professional customers at Olympia a few years ago and what the industry really needs is a true equivalent of the BVE event with less emphasis on equipment and more on photography itself because the world continues to turn, there are always new customers, new outlets and new ways to make a living from photography. Certainly, the work I do today, the wonderful clients I have, I could never have imagined when I set out on this journey.