Photography trendsin the digital age

Trends in Communication & Information TechnologyJOUR 4871-003

The biggest change...

Good old days:Dedicated photojournalists,videographers who teamed

with reporters, correspondentsMore reporters expected todo their own photos, audio,

video, etc.

Tools for the do-it-all journalist

More photographers in the news soupStaff photographers, videographers

Freelancer photographers (especially to work with foreign correspondents)

Wire-service staff photographers, freelancers

Photo agencies: Getty Images, Corbis, Magnum, Black Star, et al

Reporters, columnists, freelance writers doing their own photos

Eyewitness photographers: found via social-media posts (e.g., via Geofeedia: Instagram, Twitter, Flickr, etc.)

On-demand eyewitnesses (Rawporter)

On-demand photographers (Demotix, GigWalk, Tackable, Amazon Mechanical Turk, eLance, Guru.com, oDesk)

Open-to-all stock photo services

Flickr (e.g., GigaOm uses many Flickr photos: Creative Commons License)

Pixoto: A different kind of stock photo service

Pixoto Image Duels: crowd-sourced photo ratings

Next step: crowd-sourced stock photo service

FOAP: crowd-sourced phone stock photos

FOAP: crowd-sourced phone stock photos

Today’s environment for photography

More competition for professional photographers, photojournalists

Consumer cameras more sophisticated

Even phone cameras can take pretty good photos

Eyewitnesses with cameras are everywhere (pro photographers are not)

Non-pro photo often “good enough” for news purposes (e.g., reporter’s pics; eyewitness shots)

High-end stock photo agencies threatened: More clients will choose “good enough” (e.g., from Pixoto, iStockPhoto, etc.)