On 2014-03-11 08:40, Jan Faul wrote: > > On Mar 11, 2014, at 3:29 AM, David Dyer-Bennet wrote: >> >> Photojournalism as a whole is a BIG field; if the statement doesn't >> apply to that entire field, then it doesn't appply to "digital >> photographers by and large". > > I guess you’ve never looked at the numbers. Do you have any inkling of > how many 35mm camera bodies were sold from 1950 to 2001? How many DSLR’s > were sold between 2001 and 2010? The numbers are both in the millions > with the fitst being in the very low millions (the age of film) and the > second being so many millions it is difficult to fathom how so many > pro-am cameras are out and about in the hands of amateurs. But most of them don't take the time, or have the skill, to do much significant alteration to their photos. Most don't even own photoshop. Many fetishize *not* post-processing. And of course most of them aren't actually "competition" for you. > Lenses are a > whole other matter, as the numbers of red line and gold line lenses are > staggering. Good luck getting the numbers from Canon and Nikon as I > imagine they actual production figures are more secret than the nuclear > weapon launch codes. And I get cheap amusement seeing people toting a Nikon D4 with a Tokina 28-300mm lens on it. > Until about 10 years ago, I had 50,000 competitors worldwide and that > was fine. I knew nobody with more than one or two really long and > amazing telephoto lenses like a 600mm f4 and a 300mm f2.8. I did own a 300/2.8 for a while, but found it somewhat long and somewhat heavy for the places I had hoped to use it, and eventually sold it on. Never have allocated the money for any more-extreme super-tele (and I'm not a bird or wildlife shooter at all seriously, so they're not *that* tempting for me). > Now it is 2014. I know 20 amateurs (doctors, dentists, surgeons, > brokers, executives) with more than one $10,000+ telephoto lens which > they use exclusively on vacation in Africa, Central America, Asia, > Antarctica, or an Aegean island with a beach full of naked young men and > women. Every shot they take is washed through PS. If you’ve ever been in > a medical office with pictures of wild animals on the walls, the shots > were made by the guy at the top who just got back from another trip to > Africa where he made thousands of really boring shots of lions feeding > and/or hippos bathing. I know people with money from their day jobs who invest heavily in their photography -- but they're not doing what I think of as "alterations" in photoshop. Many of them don't even have photoshop. Maybe it's a doctor / dentist thing (semi-serious; my examples are tech entrepreneurs). > Why would a dentist need a $25,000 zoom lens if he did not believe he > could be a better photographer than a pro who sits in a blind for weeks > waiting for an eagle to hatch? This is the gimme generation of folks who > used to be adults and have discovered their chosen careers are > b-o-r-i-n-g. They want the satisfaction which comes from creating art > even though they haven’t done the legwork. By and large they believe PS > can massage their crap and make them famous. Whoa, I've apparently been lax in browsing the B&H catalog; $25K zoom lens? People don't necessarily like their own pictures because they believe they're better; sometimes they like them because they remind them of having been there, for example. > Right this minute there is a medical professional in Georgetown > massaging 3500 fresh off the memory card photos of African wild dogs for > his boss so that one of them can grace the wall of a waiting room. > Across the country, there is another similar person massaging thousands > of shots of naked young men and women for use in a flotilla of web sites > featuring skin. There used to be 500 porn stars and now there are tens > of thousands and all are washed through Photoshop. The skin sites are pretty religious about having the paperwork in order, meaning that those photos probably weren't shot with super-teles on Aegean islands. Especially the large percentage clearly taken indoors. -- David Dyer-Bennet, dd-b@xxxxxxxx; http://dd-b.net/ Snapshots: http://dd-b.net/dd-b/SnapshotAlbum/data/ Photos: http://dd-b.net/photography/gallery/ Dragaera: http://dragaera.info Nikon DSLR photo list: http://d4scussion.com
