Professional Photographers? Professional Whingers
Read this: http://edition.cnn.com/2012/02/22/opinion/phones-instagram-apps-stern/
The best camera is the one you have with you at the time. You'll pardon me for dismissing that photographer's rant as a rant. It doesn't matter if you've got a $15k camera with a million dollars invested in lenses and tripods and steady cams: if you're not pointing the camera at the thing that you want to report about when it happens, you're not taking the prize winning photos.
Even worse for professional photographers is that people with pocket cameras out on the street don't understand the value that their photos represent to publishers, so they'll happily sign away their rights for peanuts, or simply not be aware that they have any rights.
It's quite amusing to see company groups like the MPAA being quite happy to claim copyright on works that they have no involvement with: claiming copyright on the soundtrack of a home made film which happened to have bird song in the background, for example - http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/youtube/thread?tid=55df85c8372461a6&hl=en
Then on the flip side, those same industry groups will go out of their way to prevent private individuals claiming copyright on their own works.
So with apologies to professional photographers: your industry is screwed due to advances in technology and a crazy world of Copyright where the MPAA and RIAA are poisoning your well. You're not the only people with decent cameras today: consider that the camera in an iPhone is far ahead of the earliest digital cameras, and produces pictures that are perfectly suited to newsprint articles or web-based reporting.
Your camera may be better, but it's not the best one. The best one was the one that caught the image that the customer is willing to buy at the offered price.
The best camera is the one you have with you at the time. You'll pardon me for dismissing that photographer's rant as a rant. It doesn't matter if you've got a $15k camera with a million dollars invested in lenses and tripods and steady cams: if you're not pointing the camera at the thing that you want to report about when it happens, you're not taking the prize winning photos.
Even worse for professional photographers is that people with pocket cameras out on the street don't understand the value that their photos represent to publishers, so they'll happily sign away their rights for peanuts, or simply not be aware that they have any rights.
It's quite amusing to see company groups like the MPAA being quite happy to claim copyright on works that they have no involvement with: claiming copyright on the soundtrack of a home made film which happened to have bird song in the background, for example - http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/youtube/thread?tid=55df85c8372461a6&hl=en
Then on the flip side, those same industry groups will go out of their way to prevent private individuals claiming copyright on their own works.
So with apologies to professional photographers: your industry is screwed due to advances in technology and a crazy world of Copyright where the MPAA and RIAA are poisoning your well. You're not the only people with decent cameras today: consider that the camera in an iPhone is far ahead of the earliest digital cameras, and produces pictures that are perfectly suited to newsprint articles or web-based reporting.
Your camera may be better, but it's not the best one. The best one was the one that caught the image that the customer is willing to buy at the offered price.