Photography and Instant Pudding

As the first decade of the new millennium comes to a close, I find myself asking where might it go from here? More importantly, at least to me, is where I might go from here? I'm guessing a few of you might be wondering the same; not about me but about yourselves.

The first decade of the 21st Century saw many changes in the world of photography: some have been exciting, some not so.

While photographic technologies leaped forward in amazing ways, the business of photography was pushed against a wall, certainly from the perspectives of many who ply the trade as their vocation. What digital photography has done for photographers is similar to what instant pudding must have done for those who practiced the fine, culinary art of traditional pudding making. That is, it put making good pictures into the hands of the masses much the way instant pudding put good pudding into the mouths of many more pudding lovers. Some see developments like these as being positive. Others see them from less appreciative perspectives.

Don't get me wrong. I thoroughly love many of photography's technological advances of the last decade. But, at the same time, these advances have made making a living with cameras in my hands much more difficult.

Sure, cream rises to the top. And if cream I be, I'll rise. Perhaps not to the very top but in a generally upward direction. I'm not sure where that rising will take me but, hopefully, somewhere that makes me happy and content.

I don't pretend to have an accurate crystal ball, one that allows me to predict where photography will go in the next decade. Every time I watch an old science fiction movie, movies I'm quite fond of viewing, I'm amused by their (more often than not) inabilities to accurately predict where technology has gone in the last 30 or 40 or 50 years. Sometimes, of course, the writers and producers of those movies saw the future and predicted it with accuracy. Often, they did not.

I do have a wish-list for the future of photography. It's not about cameras and software. Instead, it mostly has to do with consumers of the pictures photographers make. I hope that quality will again trump mediocrity. In other words, I hope those people who hire photographers will raise the quality bar (from where it's been lowered to) and appreciate and embrace the work and results of skillful shutter snappers. I'm not saying that appreciation has completely fallen to the wayside but, in many ways, it's nowhere near where it once was.

Anyway, just some thoughts that popped into my head.

The pretty girl at the top is Rosemary from last night's shoot. Rosemary is Indonesian and, as such, she popped my Indonesian cherry, pretty girl shooting-wise.