I don't do it for my health man. I do it for the belt, man.

Jacqueline, my agent, just emailed me today to ask for my response to the following question:

Do you feel competition is helpful or hurtful in the photography world?

She told me to create a blog post with my answer, and she'll link art buyers and ad agency creatives to the post. Cool. Umm. Hi. Thanks for visiting. Here's my response. I wrote it in a stream of consciousness.


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Personally, for me its not about competition being objectively helpful or hurtful. The answer to that question would depend on whether or not the respondent is an optimist or a pessimist. Photography is competitive, now more than ever. And a week from now, it will be more than that. Its inevitable. The only thing we have control over is how we react to the situation.

We live in the information age. And as each day passes, photography grows increasingly more popular and more accessible: technologically, financially, educationally, and even professionally. Digital SLR cameras and professional grade editing software are all easy to get a hold of. Social networking sites (like Flickr) function as online galleries where professional and amateur photographers alike can share, critique and gain feedback on each others work. Even sites like Facebook or MySpace, cultivate a new crop of amateur photographers, because they encourage the creation and distribution of personal photos. Educational resources are everywhere on the internet. Getting talent and models to photograph are a simple mouse click away. And micro stock agencies allow weekend warrior photographers to monetize their entire image catalog.

Welcome to the brave new world. On many levels, the roles of agencies (ad, stock, modeling, and otherwise) have been flipped on their head. In terms of business there is more competition from all angles. Ad agencies begin to rely less on assignment photographers, because a vast number of amateur photographers have presented them with cheap endless catalogs of images organized on micro stock websites and social networks. And the amount of competent knowledgeable semi-pro photographers increase with each day. These semi-pros flood the market with egregiously low day rates, grossly undercutting the incomes of established professional photographers, many of whom were forced to stop being a photographer, or seek out additional sources of revenue.

Where does this all leave the professional photographer? For me personally, I love competition. I love playing sports and training. I feel like you're only as good as your competition. So if there are more photographers, then it creates a great opportunity for me to become that much better. Besides, the cream always rises to the top.

I am all for freely sharing the wealth of knowledge. The benefits far out weigh the draw backs. We need only look at our newly elected President Obama to see the power of an educated population. The information age has made photography so highly accessible, that it led to an enormous influx of new photographers, and I feel in the long run, its all for the best. Since everyone is shooting so much, they gain a greater understanding of photography. I can play off of their knowledge of the medium. I actually believe that there is now more potential for my work to be appreciated.

On a spiritual level, I feel that everyone is designed to do something. And artists are defined simply as those people who have to make art to feel right. I've always had to photograph the world in order to feel happy and enjoy my life. So there is no danger of me not shooting anymore just because photography has become increasingly more difficult professionally.

And in general, I'm a very forward thinking person. I don't seek to conserve established paradigms. The spirit of a creative is to push forward and embrace the future. If this is the way the world is moving, then I will go with the flow. From what I can see, there is more competition everywhere, in all creative arenas, not just photography. The gate keepers of music industry, the record labels, are no longer the sole dictators of who the important musicians will be. The people are. Established print media distribution channels such as newspapers and magazines and even books, are falling to the way side of Blogs, Twitters, Dugg articles and Facebook notes. I even recently discovered that the top 5 best seller book list in Japan are all teen high school girl journals written from cellphones.

More competition is the direction the media world is moving towards. There is no getting around it. So you either adapt to survive, or you miss out. It's not a question of competition being a good thing or a bad thing. It is what it is. Man up.