My latest post moved many friendly reactions, and words of support.. Well, thanks, but I didn't want to sound too pessimist, or even less in the mood to surrender: quite the contrary! Let me clarify my personal perception of the situation.
When I talk of Travel Photography I refer only to the professional work normally published on travel magazines or books, certainly not to the documentary or reportage work that, obviously, requires traveling (otherwise any picture shoot more the 1 km from home would be travel).
I think is better to face a crisis before is definitive, so we can search solutions, new expression, new media without a sense of vacuum under our feet. See the Einstein citation in the right column of this blog: that is exactly how I see it!
This is the time to start the Re-Evolution of this profession. This is the time for ideas and creativity, but also the time to explore the development of media where the artist can have more control. Because we know that many of the problems for our profession are due to the disappearance or real publishers..
So, keep smiling, and above all, keep thinking, shooting, creating....
In my humble opinion the profession's pillars remains the same, while its moods are a-changing. I am sure that there's still a wide number of people potentially very interested in travel stories (and in magazines that publish them), but this number is lost in the big ocean of generalist, web-driven, superficial information. The challenge for us is to find back this potential readers and offer them our reportages on a technologically updated media. It is not a matter of being pessimistic, but of having a straight idea about what's going on. As I wrote in this post (http://blog.stefanotesi.it/?p=102) on my blog.
ReplyDeleteStefano