The way I see media

Media is a fickle thing at the best of times, and new technology has effectively blown our use of media out of the water. Or has it? Media can be delivered to the user quite effectively these days. Mobile phones, iPods with video in, but yet the majority of people are still taking their content the more traditional ways via the TV and the desktop computer. Wireless networks are still just too fiddly, patchy, insecure and slow. Mobile electronic reading devices still can't rip us away from our paper.

When all is said and done, the general public likes their media high quality. You go high quality, baby, and that is going to cost you bandwidth monies when you get popular. That places low quality home made stuff with no message, in the back end of You Tube where it will be consigned to a handfull of diggs by your family and friends and thats it. The occasional piece of well put together amateur work will shine for a moment, and then be eventually forgotten.

But even the high end quality is taking a knock where they are not careful. Now that there is a slight increase in the serious players out in the field, the consumers have enough choice so that they can leave the proprietary locked iPod and Zune-ish stuff to rot on the shelf. There are other things to spend money on.

So how does media as a whole affect photography? Well, quite a lot in fact. Who hasn't heard the line, "Video killed the radio star," eh? Well, the radio stars are still going strong on the mainstream stations that are maintaining to meet customer demand and retain high quality output. The rest are just small fish in ever smaller ponds. The forced change in licence fees for music has also clobbered the smaller internet radio stations and is set to throttle peoples creativity all over the world; no longer can you put that cool soundtrack over your home movie and post in on the net without knowingly having to look over your electronic shoulder for the music licence police.

But what the heck has all that to do with photography?

A lot. It mainly means that the freedoms of the net are not as free as they used to be any more. The flood of content is making people more selective than ever about what they watch, read and listen to. The boom is heading for a contraction at some point, when people get fed up of making stuff that no one is watching or listening to.

The only media really proliferating right now on the high street are still pictures. They're everywhere. Product advertising across the spectrums to movies, food, clothing, electronic goods, jewelry, services, you just can't go anywhere without coming across still images. And they're quality as well. Video doesn't cost much to produce these days, but quality video still does cost a lot; a lot more than still photography. Consider the following advertising locations ...

Bus Shelter.
You still can't yet stick a moving advert in a bus shelter 'cause it'll get vandalised. There are a very few around but they are in places where the vandals are too scared to take out their sledgehammer steel toecapped boots.

Magazine/news paper
The technology isn't yet around to support it properly yet and even when it does, it faces a few problems. The user will be viewing one page at a time so won't see your full page advert on the page opposite to the very interesting article they are reading. Also, they'll have the power to skip over your digital advertising page whenever they want. Try and force them to spend five seconds viewing your advert and the fickle audience will ditch the media completely. Print will be around for some time yet.

Advertising TV
The problem with advertising TV is similar to that of those billboards that can display three or more still adverts at a time. What are the chances that a potential customer will be looking at your ad when they look at the board? Also, a good quality video ad will, as mentioned before, cost you money because you have to hit your audience with enough visual power to keep them hooked to the advert long enough to see your message, rather than continue on to the cafe to get that latte they want to buy; cheap skating just won't cut it.

National TV
They demand a decent quality advert ... again ... serious, serious money. With everything going high def, that means even more expense, better make up and all that goes with it because even the slightest blemish can be seen.

In short, a good leafleting campaign, local/national newspaper or targeted magazine advert, or a billboard ad, are still the traditionally better ways of advertising. That still means good still photography for the most part. Some adds rely on drawn art, and some just on writing, but the demand for quality commercial photography is still there and is hotting up. Stock photography still thrives for this area, but only the good stuff survives in this very competative arena.

Web news media could be the only place where I see video media taking a bit of a chunk out of the market. It is sometimes far better to see a short video report spoken by the person themselves rather than read about it in the edited words of the journalist. This kind of work still needs serious quality, however, and to keep up with the timeliness of delivery needs good editing teams who can handle the throughput coming back from the journalists. There are always places, however, where video cameras can't go and still photography with good lighting, will always rule. Either because of lighting conditions, licencing rules or just plain creativity. The problem for newspapers who take the majority of content on the web is going to be advertising, as they will then be competing with all the other web sites out there for the fickle advertising dollar. It will be interesting to see how abandoning print works for these advertising income driven enterprises ... if they dare.

A private corporation study of web users in the late eighties which I was privy to, discovered that when viewing web pages people actually put their hands over moving media because it was irritating. Whether two decades of surfing has made these people insensitive to uninvited animated activity on a web page, has yet to be seen but it does suggest that a better designed stationary advert will have more impact than a moving one.

So, photographers, fear not. The amateurs will soon tire of their photographic toys and get on with life as it used to be. Only the realy tallented or hard working will make it through, just like it was before. There will be tides of people coming up and down as new digital cameras are bought and sold but I wouldn't like to be involved in the consumer camera end when the crunch comes; 'cause only the seriously flush will be able to keep up with the megapixel war. Now that we have hit quality consumer cameras in recent years, with some economies are starting to slow, most people now have a very good digital camera (and many of them actually haven't got a clue how to use them) and they probably won't buy another any time soon. A few lines from the merchandisers in, "Chess," comes to mind ... "In the end the whole world bought one, All were gone, By which time we merchandisers, Had moved on."

Commercial advertising photography will still be there, and strong. Reporting media and magazines can't reliably abandon the print advertising dollar so that will still remain. The local commercial wedding and event photography will, however, feel the pressure of the contracting economies as people just can't afford the basic packages, let alone the expensive ones; the people talking to me are not so much of the view that, "Uncle Tom has a digital camera and can do the job," but rather that they just don't have the cash for a pro photographer these days.

Cost is also driving the commercial rights in the low end of the market. People want more control over the product. They want copies of the negatives. One person told me their story of their wedding photos taken years ago, which are now irreplacable after the photographer went out of business and no one knows what happened to the negatives; so if they need copies after a flood or fire, they're stuck ... people are getting wise and thinking about these things. With the increasing number of photographers in the game, customer requirements are an important part of sealing the deal ... and if that means changing the rights package and handing over the negs for personal, non-commercial use only; then that will be the only way to survive. Hey, it saves you having to do the prints yourself.

So, the way I see it is, the high end photographers livelyhoods and incomes are probably safe for the long term ... or until the public ditch the newspaper and magazine and start walking around with high tech goggles on all the time that blank out street adverts. The stock and consumer photographer will probably have a bit of a battle until the amateure photographers get fed up and move on; only leaving the hobyists. Media photographers ... well, anything could happen in this game; this is the one area where video might well kill the 35mm star.