----Seeing him work made me very envious of his support team and his budget for each shoot. Ordinary photographers like me can only dream of having the in-house processing, printing and retouching facilities which he has. Like most other folks I struggle along with my own editing and printing----David Watson
I just visited his exhibition "water" here in Vienna, very very impressive. And with no background information I calculated his expenses beyond a million $. After reading some more about him and his work I must say that he is one of those few photographers who is an artist and also manages to be comercial successfull.
What I do not like is that you get in modern photography more and more the impression that without the massive use of technical tools you do not get great pictures. And me being 55 years old and coming from "classic" analog photography I am torn between adoring these people using new tools and on the other side seeing too much "manipulation" going on with an end result that represents what? Nature, reality, or a fantasy? But I am very well aware that even many of Ansel Adams masterpieces were altered in many ways.
Thank you for the great videos and the good background information.
I have a lot of sympathy for your point of view.
What you have to bear in mind, though, is that the
business of photography is only a tiny part of photography.
The business, the art and the marketing of photography are vastly different things, and being good at all three is seldom given to one mind. And success within a genre isn't always what it might appear to be: it can become a straightjacket. Look around you and you see people performing upon treadmill after treadmill; money doesn't solve that, simply substitutes one set of problems for another.
Personally, I'd envy nobody. We all have our personal hell to endure.
Just enjoy whatever is available to you (one), and try to remain true to your own beliefs.
Rob C