----- Original Message -----
From: "Randy Little" <randyslittle@xxxxxxxxx>
To: "List for Photo/Imaging Educators - Professionals - Students"
<photoforum@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Friday, July 19, 2013 11:43 PM
Subject: Re: Innovate or Die
Karl No one shoots film commercially anymore. The turn around is to
slow.
there aren't even labs on the West side of Los angeles anymore. You have
to have it couriered to Hollywood. None of of my friends in NYC shoot
film at all.
The big kicker is is my wife and here friends won't hire a photographer
that shoots film. Sure fine art work film will always be around.
Commercially its gone.
As for the Sun Times the whole paper just as by lines that say AP now.
Its
not like the writers are actually putting that much in from their phones.
Its just way cheaper to pay the AP who are already on side for the big
stories and many of the smaller ones then have staff. So in a way you
could just blame the AP.
I understand this.. As you'd know from spending time in Oz, we here are
early adopters and take to new technology like ducks to water.. we had the
highest number of mobiles per head, faxes, cameras at one time or another
and film was declared dead almost as soon as those old full frame Canon and
Nikon digitals hit the scene here at 17k a pop. We are often used as market
test subjects for tech releases and see models in Oz from japan before the
rest of the world sees them. Not always, but often..
So yeah, we got the gear early, and it killed film early here too. .. but
then so did the pro photo market. Guys who were making $1k a day in the
80's were shutting shop when they were outpriced by competitors shooting for
$300 a day in the late 90's, now days they're lucky to see $250 a day. this
in a country where we pay 4-8 times what you gys in the US do for the same
products. Perth is apparently one of the most expensive places in the world
to live, where the guy laying paving for the local council can earn twice
what a photographer can..
I understand for commercial work film is gone, but commercial work it's SELF
has gone here! An in-house importer gets the casual store person to shoot
product shots when they need them. The graphics guys pull stock images
from the manufacturers website, our news photographers are journo's armed
with iPhones© .. The medical photographers are all digital (and
apparently some have just heard about this new fangled 'infra-red'
photography that can record bruising.. not that they know how to do it) -
the old guys were displaced and now retired aren't passing on their skills.
I actually don't see many 'photographers' left in any industry here. Hence
the point, if anyone wants to be such a rare beast, film might be one of the
few ways left to differentiate themselves from 'snappers'. Stepping into
multimedia, graphic design or video is largely pointless unless yo were to
view it as a complete career change.
I don't get a lot of work (I don't chase it) but I can ask far, far higher
prices as a film shooter than I can for digital.
