The Professional Photographer is resembling yesterday's Blacksmith.

by Val Gelineau, CEO PhotoSpin, Inc.

100 years ago, "Smithy" was the guy who fixed the horse's shoes, made pots and pans, repaired the wagon's wheels - everyone hired him at one point or another. No town was without one. You could say he was indispensable. He charged whatever the people were willing to pay and possessed a fair amount of skill. Soon enough - if "Smithy" didn't learn to work on automobiles - he was soon out of business. Technology changes the world in many ways. Take the digital camera for example. Basically, just point and click. Cameras today have automated most of the technical aspects of photography. Sure, you still have to understand composition but we all know - take a lot of pictures and you're bound to come up with something decent. With the digital camera, the cost of processing isn't even a concern. As a professional photographer for almost 20 years prior to starting PhotoSpin, I'm seeing similarities between the way of the Blacksmith and the way of the photographer. I wonder where the industry is headed. In the '70's stock photography drastically changed the business model of the photography industry but it didn't make the photographer obsolete. It just gave professional photographers more avenues to sell photographs. In the mid '90's, once again the business model dramatically changed with online royalty-free images available to anyone with a credit card and a computer. It made photography more affordable to the masses. Now, micropayment sites have made it easy for not only anyone to buy images but also for anyone to sell images. This has opened up the photography industry to amateur photographers in a big way. Anyone willing to sell images for pennies a download simply uploads their images to the site and is paid a commission. What are your thoughts on this? I'll let you know what I think about all of this... in the next post.