Is Age of Professional Photographer Over?

[taco2go]

Can photography be art? Sure, in the rare case, just like making shoes can be an art form.

The vast majority of pro photographers are artisans who use their tools to create a salable product.

Chip, I wholeheartedly agree with your second point, and wholeheartedly disagree with the first.

 

[Redline]

Nice discussion and comments here.

 

[Every Miles A Memory]

That pretty much summed it up.
Being a Professional Photographer really has little to do with taking pictures.

I couldnt agree with this statement more! Being a Professional Photographer has little to do with picture quality, and EVERYTHING to do with Marketing yourself. So many emails ask of "How do I become a professional photographer?" My reply is always "Go to school for marketing, and shoot with your camera as much as possible learning the camera's skills on your own dime, while you learn the marketing skills as a degree."

 

[Lost Canadian]

I know some people love to hate on this guy, for whatever reason, but he is a pretty smart dude and despite what some may think of his work, he does do pretty well for himself, better than anyone here I would guess. Anyway, listen to what Trey has to say about photography and about the business side of things. There's some very interesting takeaways from this talk. It's kinda long but it's very good. He only speaks uninterrupted for about 20+ minutes, the rest is Q&A, which is pretty good as well.

[video=youtube;evIH8sFqw4I]http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=evIH8sFqw4I#![/video]