[Leica] "Cheap" photos force out "best quality" photos.

[lrzeitlin at gmail.com (Lawrence Zeitlin)]

Tina writes:

"It's almost impossible to make a living as a professional

photographer these days and I try to discourage everybody who asks.  You

have to be better than the prosumers but that's not often an issue since

"good enough" and "cheap" trump "best quality" most of the time."

- - - - -

A while back I posted a similar complaint about a photographic version of
Gresham's Law - Bad, i.e. adequate cheap photography forces out good, i.e.
expensive professional photography. Here is a portion of the text:


*Photographic equipment has evolved to the point where little technical
knowledge is required to make adequate photographs. Anyone can pick up a
camera, point it at a subject and get a perfectly exposed, in focus, image.
It is all in knowing where to point the camera and that facility is shared
by many who do not classify themselves as photographers. There is no long
apprenticeship learning the fundamentals. The entry bar is very low. This
extends to commercial photography as well as pictures of Aunt Julia. A
national distributor of mechanical equipment in my neighborhood photographs
all the pictures in his voluminous catalog himself. "Why," he says, "pay
thousands to a professional photographer. How much skill does it take to
make a picture of a bolt?"*

Larry Z