and end of an era?

  I've always thought that I've lived through an interesting time in my career.  I started shooting black and white film.  I later went on to learn how to expose color slide films which had so little lattitude that you'd have to "bracket" your frames to make sure you hit that narrow correct exposure by overshooting.  I even learned how to make color prints in a darkroom.  In the mid-80's, I began learning the early versions of Adobe Photoshop, and have been moving steadily along upgrading every time they come out with a new one.

  When I started working for newspapers, we had to make color prints on the road in makeshift darkrooms created with black plastic bags in hotel-room bathrooms.  Once the print was dry, we'd attach them to a transmission machine that used the phone lines to "move" the photos, each one taking 27 minutes.

  When I later graduated to magazines, I learned how to use medium and large format cameras, extensive lighting equipment, and many advanced techniques to create highly graphic and involved technical photographs.

  Digital photography has now come fully into it's own.  Everyone can make great images just by pointing and shooting.  It's become more and more difficult to make a living as a photographer as art directors and even ad sales reps. shoot their own photos for advertising and marketing purposes.  It seems to me that there are fewer people out there with budgets that know the difference between what I can create in an image and what someone else can simply "grab."

  My recent foray into HD video has been fun and while I'm really enjoying training with new weapons of communication, I have to admit I miss doing as many still photo assignments as I used to.  I'm just not shooting enough these days and it kind of hurts inside when I can't use this most important muscle that I've worked so hard to form throughout my 25 year career.

  While real estate values seem to be on the rebound, I'm getting this ominous, dark feeling that permanent damage that has been done by digital photography, Getty Images, work for hire contracts, shrinking budgets, and entire groups of publications that no longer exist, seem to all be confirming my sense of the state of still photography.  It's not good.

  As I continue to scan my film images from the early part of my career, I see the beauty held in that thin bead of gelatin and silver.  It makes me sad that our craft has been so damaged that so many shooters are out of work.  Perhaps the greatest thing I mourn is what seems to be the untimely death of my beloved photojournalism.  It's not good.  Telling true stories with still photos seems to have been hijacked by "reality TV shows," and "lifestyle wedding reportage," which seems to me to be nothing more than bad photos of cute people with severe photoshop actions applied.  That is not what I signed up for when I graduated with my PhotojournalismB. A. in 1989.  It's not good...

  I have to tell you that part of me wants to give up and maybe do something else that would be easier to make a buck.  But the other part of me says "Hell No!"  I'm not done yet.  People need to see the difference between passing fads and style and the concrete and ultimate Truth of black and white.  Things are tough right now for most of us that make a living shooting.  I plan to never give up, to keep the faith, and to ignore Darwin and his crazy theory.  I'm going to make meaningful images for the long haul until they pry the 120 megapixel DSLR from my cold dead hands...  I hope someone will take good care of my Diana lens for my EOS when I'm gone...