Brooks Institute (history) has traditionally been one of the best places for an American to learn the craft of commercial photography. It seems that, after 71 years, the school is closing (story). What’s next then? Can we blame the film-to-digital transition? Can you do commercial photography at a lower level of skill if there is always an instant preview? Is there no point in learning view camera craft if perspective corrections can be done in Photoshop after viewing a YouTube tutorial?
Even in the digital era studio photography is an unfamiliar environment to a typical young person. Why has it suddenly become unprofitable to teach and/or learn?
Could it be that the future is all-iPhone all-the-time? A school that people would pay for would be run by the Apple Store and be limited to the iPhone and iPad?
Is it more likely that photography just doesn’t pay very well anymore?
paddy: BLS says it pays $15.24 per hour, i.e., slightly more than the new minimum wage! See http://www.bls.gov/ooh/media-and-communication/photographers.htm
So you’re right in that flipping burgers in Seattle would pay just as much, but on the other hand I don’t think it was ever an easy way to make money. But on the third hand, a reduction in salary relative to other options does seem like the simplest explanation.
I guess since the child support guidelines went into effect circa 1990, there is one obvious way to make more than the BLS’s $31,710/year pre-tax. The ADP paycheck calculator says that is $23,814 per year post-tax here in Massachusetts. That’s $458/week. See http://www.realworlddivorce.com/Massachusetts for how having sex with someone earning $2,300/week ($119,600/year) would yield the same spending power, at least for 23 years. But on the fourth hand, a lot of the people who want to become photographers are men and it is more difficult (though not impossible) for a man to be a child support profiteer.
That was a shock. Brooks had advertisements in high school photography classes, many decades ago. Student loans are booming & everyone expects to get bailed out. Education startups are the blockbusters of 2016 with Quizlet being the latest one. Perhaps incredibly bad management can cause a school to fall behind the trends or the founders just wanted to get paid.
Print is dead but art is a lot more important than it used to be. Art is clickbait & Facebook’s $400 billion valuation is all clickbait with a little central bank intervention. Most of the people staffing the mobile app boom are artists. Software can’t display raw information anymore & hope to make money without being an art project. But most of the money from art is going to Facebook/Apple/Goog rather than the artists.
Phil, taking your child profiteering career option to extreme… if every woman started working on it, wouldn’t the supply of profitable men disappear? Further, with a growing population, fewer jobs (automation) and concentration of capital the supply is limited as it is.
Jernej: Obviously you’re right that overinvestment in any industry tends to reduce the overall return on investment. However, there may be only about 4 million Americans currently working their children for profit (see http://www.realworlddivorce.com/Summary ). So a lot of opportunity remains. Don’t forget that foreigners can come over to the U.S., get pregnant, return home and collect child support via wire transfer at U.S. rates. Even if a defendant has been previously targeted and therefore yields less cash than a defendant not under an existing child support order, the profit may be substantial by the standards of an Eastern European or Latin American country. (Simple example: The Bolivian visitor who has sex with a Boston-area dentist goes home to start receiving $40,000 per year for 23 years or nearly $1 million total.)