Do you think photography is over saturated??

>>2913074
really, really depends on where you're talking about and what level.

senior portraits and shooting weddings for less than a grand? Yes, absolutely.

Elsewhere? eh..

I'm talking about the people who go on Instagram taking shitty pictures and putting #photography

They're just as much of a photographer as you or I.

>>2913074
>>2913077
Nobody truly cares about them. Go ahead and be jealous of bots and wannabe Likes and Favs.

>>2913159
Speak for yourself, you must be garbage.

Just take photos and be happy with yourself.

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Kys op your photos are probably shit anyways

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>photography becomes more popular when technological democratisation allows everyone to take photos and share them with ease

What you're doing is just restating the tired old conservative argument in a territorial fight for words and social status that arise every time any previously expensive/Inaccessible technology becomes available to a wider group of people. What, the peasants can read BOOKS now?

>>2913074
Anybody who has a camera and takes photos is by definition a photographer, if you claim to hold yourself to such high esteem but worry about casual photographers, it makes you look like a talentless piece of shit
I go on /fit/ I workout, I run,
I run 15 miles a week
If someone else only runs 1 mile a week, does that over saturate the runner charicature with people who I don't deem advanced enough to call themselves runners?
Somebody calls themselves a gamer but they only play Pokemon and shit on their Nintendo DS, they're not like the /v/ charicature, playing Garry's mod on a PC
Does this mean they don't have the right to call themselves a gamer?

Also deeming someone any less of a photographer for the gear they have or lack thereof could be done both ways.
You may shame someone for only using compact cameras or iPhones.
Someone can shame you for being a digital photographer if they choose to shoot film, I can shame one for shooting mirrorless if I choose to shoot on a DSLR etc etc
Professional chefs don't complain about amateur cooks taking up space in #food, and you shouldn't care about amateur photographers taking up space in #photography

>>2913074
>Do you think writing is over saturated??
>People thinking they are "writers" because they can spell their name and with facebook and their twitter accounts

>>2913077
>Photography
>the art or practice of taking and processing photographs.
They aren't wrong putting #photography as a hashtag on their shitty pictures.

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>i just sold rhein ii for £2.7m
>and yet i feel empty inside
>because somebody on instagram used the hashtag #photography

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some people aren't photographers, they just create images.

photography is oversaturated as fuck. I can't even can get a decent job because there are many people with D3200 or t3i that do the same shit I do without any qualities and charging way less or "muh portfolio" thing

>>2913201
I get your point, but there's a difference.

Photographers are generally trying to produce art, right?
Runners are not. Gamers are not.

>>2914607
>Photographers are generally trying to produce art, right?
Nope. I'd say that if we're talking about working photographers, even if you include those with pretensions of creating art/being artistic, are in the minority.

The long story short, market saturation only matters to those who are just ok at the field. If you're more than ok, you won't have to worry.

I think it has been very saturated from the moment digital cameras became a thing. Now even more so with dls'rs being quite inexpensive, almost everyone has a phone that has a decent camera (for a phone, not compared to actual cameras).

It's a very easy hobby to pick up but extremely hard to master.

>>2914615
Fair point, fair point.

How do you understand yourself as a photographer, might I ask?

>>2914644
I'm a wedding/event guy so I do whatever sells. It's fun and I do take pride in my work, but it's more in the sense of a craftsman than anything else. I have a skillset that means I can achieve what I aim to consistently enough that I have a comfortable life doing something I enjoy (I'd die working a "normal" job).

>>2914647
Good stuff man.

Do you think the idea of photography as art is a load of crap?

Also, do you think it takes a lot of talent to become a craftsman of photography, or is it just perseverance and dedication?

if you take photos, it's photography, they are being a photographer

photographer doesn't mean you have to be good at it, it's just a descriptive noun

>>2914662
>Do you think the idea of photography as art is a load of crap?

Not one bit. I think one of the places where people screw up is that they try to insist that there are a sort of rankings to the various media artists choose to work in. Art is the result of an artist working with artistic intent. This is a damnably vague understanding of art, but one that I think is necessary and vital to moving the discussion to the far more important conversation of whether or not a piece is effective. Getting all wound up over debates over the purity of a given medium or the inherent artistry required of a given medium entirely misses the point. Like look at that Gursky thread. There's only mocking conversation of the piece's intent with people preferring to just argue over it being "photography" which is probably the most boring thing that can be discussed about it.

>Also, do you think it takes a lot of talent to become a craftsman of photography, or is it just perseverance and dedication?

Talent is mostly a lie. While some people are predisposed to learning certain skillsets faster, barring actual mental disabilities, any skillset is within reach. You just have to put in the work for it. It's like how people whine about a subject like math being hard. Yes it's hard as hell if you don't do the homework, don't do the readings, don't ask questions, don't work practice problems, and just blankly stare at a problem feeling sorry for yourself.

Now, this is a different matter from gaining widespread appreciation, because that's honestly just a matter of luck. Look at the career trajectories of say Joey L or Lara Jade. There's nothing that either of them are doing that a lot of other photographers aren't doing (I'm not saying that they're bad at what they do, just that there's nothing unique). However, the right people noticed them, then they had the personalities and the skills to capitalize on that.

>>2914670
A lot of head nodding going on here sensei.
I'm only thinking of buying a camera now, but when I do, I hope I can find you in these threads again and ask you some real questions.

>>2914678
>I'm only thinking of buying a camera now, but when I do, I hope I can find you in these threads again and ask you some real questions.
You can learn a ton just using your phone's camera. Any camera will do for doing things like practicing and experimenting with compositions, learning to visualize and then achieve a given image, and the rest. Yes, there are technical limitations in what that can do compared to other cameras, but that's true of literally every camera: all of them make compromises in some way or another. Part of being skilled with a tool is learning its limitations and how to work within them. A carpenter doesn't use a finishing hammer for framing. Aside from that, start studying photographs and trying to figure out how they were made.

There's this thing called "visual literacy", which in terms of photography a facet of which is the ability to look at a photograph and state pretty confidently and correctly things like the focal length used, the shutter speed, and the aperture. It seems like black magic until after you have spent some time looking at pictures and learning the effects that things like perspective (which is usually strongly linked to field of view which is linked to effective focal length), shutter speed and aperture have on an image. Same goes for reverse engineering lighting. You look at the directionality, the softness/hardness, the specular highlights and after a bit, you can replicate effects and styles you've seen. Just takes some time and study.

Also seek out photography groups, even overly pleasant and uncritical ones like facebook groups and flickr. While the circlejerks can be useless a lot of the time, talking about photography helps the process. I'm a big fan of somethingawful's photography forums, but you gotta pay to register.

Keep at it, stay humble, and most importantly have fun.

>>2914690

Thank you very much for the sound advice. I'll definitely follow it.

Any literature on beginning with photography that you could recommend? Something that would allow me to practice with my phone, for instance, providing me with compositional techniques to aim for.

>>2914703
Not him but have a look at these:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL7ECB90D96DF59DE5

>>2914707
Cheers

>>2914703
Just start googling up things like "artistic composition", "elements of design", "color theory", and even just things like "photography tutorials" -- don't worry about if it's aimed at photography specifically or some other visual medium, all of it plays by the same rules. Realize that nothing that's being said is a firm 100% always true rule but check out ideas and see how and if they work with what you consider good.

www.cambridgeincolour.com/tutorials.html is a generally good source on all aspects of photography.
I like Bryan Peterson's Understanding Exposure, but all of the information in it is freely available online.
Book-wise, there's always stuff that gets assigned in schools like Ansel Adam's series (especially The Negative for talking about The Zone System -- and note that most every darkroom technique has a corresponding digital technique so most everything that's talked about in books specifically about film photography is applicable to digital) -- but those might be a bit dry for you because they are all very, very technical, a rabbithole you don't have to go down at first (and later on where in that rabbithole you need to go depends on what you're trying to do)
Henri Cartier-Bresson's Decisive Moment's an interesting read
Barnbaum's The Art of Photography
Szarkowski's The Photographer's Eye
Barthes's Camera Lucida
Sontag's On Photography
Berger's Ways of Seeing
Barnett's Criticizing Photographs

...but I think the biggest things are more looking at and thinking about pictures that draw you in, trying to puzzle out why, what works about them and what doesn't, then, and this part is huge, going out and shooting on your own. Reading about carving won't teach you carving. You only truly learn it by doing it. Reading is helpful and can show you different ways of thinking about doing it, but in the end, the act of doing is what's important.

>>2914729
You are a saint. Thank you so much.

>>2914736
there are a couple of neat classes at coursea on photography you can do for free.

>>2914729

This is a great post. Thank you.

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>>2914729

You forgot probably the single best investment a photographer can make in their education in your list of books.

Seriously, every photographer should have this book.

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>>2914539
>I can't even can get a decent job
Have you tried waiting tables?
>charging way less or "muh portfolio" thing
haha yes everyone else is the problem