I clicked the Visit my Website link at the bottom of your excellent post. Is that REALLY you?
;-)
Uh . . . no.
The point I'm trying to make is, these 10% upgrades of cameras, lenses, lcd's just don't cut it anymore, not for prices that come in at BMW 7 series stickers and usability that is stuck in 2001.
We've all been ten percented to death with digital and the thing is if you shoot for commerce no client cares about 99% of the stuff we talk about here.
They care about capturing the moment, moving their own product and doing it on budget.
I really do wonder who Leica talked to before they invested millions in this camera, because I don't know a single professional that is just jumping up and down hoping for 30 mpx, and 1.5 fps, regardless of the format.
It's like Leica, F+H and a lot of these specialty still cameras took the way back machine and ended up in a period of time where everyone drove a chevrolet and the nuclear family ate dinner at the kitchen table.
I don't get it. As artists we're suppose to be visionaries and give people what they "will" want, not what they currently have, but there seems to be this huge group of photographers that are bound by some strange tradition that probably never really was that traditional in the first place.
One of our assistants said yesterday, I hate to see stills die out because I've invested my career shooting stills. I kind of stopped on that one because his "career" is 19 months at this point.
It's all changed, hell the job I'm in production with now, wants real time still and motion images out to bloggers on the day, (and this is an international client), because a handful of bloggers will reach their intended market with two million viewers and do it within hours, vs. traditional print that takes a month of pre production, two weeks of press to delivery for a thousand times more cost.
The world of advertising and editorial is in a world of hurt and confusion and the smart corporations, ad agencies and image makers are learning fast how to capitalize on free media and today the web is almost free. The people that recognize this will move forward, the ones that don't will be selling their profoto 7's for lunch money.
It's all gonna change because anything popular eventually costs more and more. Who woulda thought that people would actually pay for water, or $69 a month to watch teevee, or $75 Levis would be cheap? So bottom line is soon if your gonna read your favorite magazine or watch a video on your laptop, it's gonna cost you and the advertisers something and in the end probably more than it did in the newstand days, but until everything becomes I-tunes and a $1.99 download, today it's free and that's where mass media is going.
Companies are smart and I heard a thing on NPR yesterday that said a large multinational company was looking for executives, but only apply if you have a minimum of something like 20,000 twitter hits and actively blog.
BC