Film photography, a good business in the future ?

[bob carnie]

I am in a niche film , enlarger print business, as well I am in a complete digital business.

I agree with the idea that we will be printing silver for the time length that Silver paper is being manufactured. I also think wet alt prints will be the way of the future and to do that the niche player will need great digital skills married to wet printing skills.

At this point in my career , I can continue printing silver and alt wet prints and live very comfortably with my client base, and new clients wanting my prints.

For someone starting out fresh , I believe there also is this business model and therefore I am teaching two young ladies how to print , silver and alt. They will be in a position by the time I retire to take over.

But we are not giving up on digital technology, quite the opposite, we plan to stay on cutting edge, This will allow us to pay for Staff and Building costs.

There are k billlions of film strips that have never been printed or scanned and for a young person starting out, keeping this in mind could prove fruitful

[Jim Jones]

A creative and ambitious person with technical ability and business acumen can create a niche with older traditional photographic processes in the right locale. After most photographers upgraded to color film, the upscale Lou Charno studio in Kansas City would make portraits with a tri-color one shot camera and dye transfers for those willing to have unique (and expensive) photographs.

[GPS]

Jim, a niche is not an equivalent to a good business. Not always and not generally.

[Robert Oliver]

Like everything you post GPS... I disagree completely.

A niche can be a great thing as long as there isn't a lot of competition for what you are doing. Sometimes it's better to be a big fish in a small pool.

Jim, a niche is not an equivalent to a good business. Not always and not generally.

[GPS]

Like everything you post GPS... I disagree completely.

A niche can be a great thing as long as there isn't a lot of competition for what you are doing. Sometimes it's better to be a big fish in a small pool.

I didn't say "it cannot be" but it is not generally or always. Learned the difference?

[Steve Smith]

Jim, a niche is not an equivalent to a good business.

The phrase I heard a few years ago was "there might be a gap in the market but is there a market in the gap?".


Steve.

[Marko]

Wrong in so many ways.

The argument that because digital is common it will become worthless has no basis. Photographers earn money because of what they do, not what technology they use to do it. They are and always have been the creators of value, not the film they load or the sensors they use.

As for a backlash against digital (based somehow on the fact that it is too popular and common) leading to a reformation of the photography profession, that implies that digital photography was just one big mistake. This is either intentional blindness or incredible stupidity. Maybe both. Digital photography is popular because of clear advantages it has over film. People are not going to give those advantages up. They may still use film where it does have an advantage, but the clock won't run backwards.

I agree on all points except on the first one. It's not just wrong, it is ideologically polemic in the worst tradition of Marxism-Leninism (or whatever it was called).

Backlash against digital? That's where I stopped reading, really.

Once upon a time, there lived a fellow called Nedd Ludd. He led a backlash against dehumanizing technology of his day which replaced the skilled manual labor with soulless mechanical contrivances.

We all know how that backlash ended, but some of us prefer to keep repeating the same thing over and over again, expecting it to suddenly catch on and start producing results.

[QT Luong]

I think the main point here is that using film would supposedly make people perceive you more as an artist. An artist tends to do things differently. Does that make sense ?

So the observation applies mostly to fine art photography, with the cross-over that sometimes someone would also want an "artist" to shoot their commercial/editorial project.

[Brian Ellis]

I think it's complete nonsense. Among other reasons, most people - like 99.9% of the world - don't know, can't tell, and don't care how the original image was made.

[Tobias Key]

I think it's a mistake describe any kind of resurgence of film as a backlash against digital. I think there are young photographers out there discovering film and using it, I think there are older photographers going back to it for some things. I don't doubt that the vast majority of them have digital cameras as well. I don't see it as some kind of technological war, people will just use what they want to use. Could you build a career at this moment exclusively with film shooting? I think you'd be making a hard career choice even harder by limiting yourself in that way. By all means use what you want to use on your own dime but be pragmatic when working for others. There may be niches out there if you can market yourself in the right way but it's not that expensive to have both film and digital at your disposal. I think it certainly helps my photography that I use both.