Five Trends in Professional Photography

 

Photography and Videography by Vanessa Joy and Rob Adams

Portrait by Dawn Shields Photography

Each January, The Professional Photographer's of America hold their Imaging USA convention where the country's best professional photographers, and those who aspire to become the best, meet to learn from each other. This year, the group met in New Orleans and I had the privilege of spending much of my time in the Black River Imaging booth listening to the featured artists on the Cascade stage. I have never met a group of more talented or creative people.

Professional photography, like other creative fields, is evolving rapidly and here are five of the most noticeable trends:

1. Young women are embracing professional photography.

Many of the artists featured were young women or husband and wife teams which included young women who are unbelievably enthusiastic about photography and amazingly talented. Artists like Dixie Dixon, Amanda Reed, Dawn Shields and Natalie Licini exemplify this growing creative trend and I enjoyed listening as they explained how they found their creative vision.

2. Photographers are becoming more astute business people.

When David and Whitney Scott launched with a slide titled Behavioral Psychology and went on to explain concepts like anchor shifting and establishing norms, I knew we had entered a new age of studio management. Prem Mukherjee shared dozens of tips on how to structure your business to fit your life and Martha Dameron explained how to formalize these into a successful business plan.

3. Fisheye lenses capture scenes with drama and emotion.

When Gene Ho demonstrates his "Fisheye Five' technique for shooting with two cameras simultaneously, it is like watching a professional entertainer, Olympic gymnist and talented artist all at the same time. The way he finds angles no one else can see is amazing.

4. Fusion of video and still photography.

Vanessa Joy and Rob Adams are a husband and wife team who have also married their videography and photography skills to transcend the characteristics of either medium. They explained how the combination of short video clips with still images bring slide shows to life.

5. Social  media sharing.

Facebook is now the primary way photographers share their vision with potential customers. Elise Ellis, who blogs and manages social media for Black River Imaging explained how a studio's website should be the center of its social media solar system and how to make every other site lead back to the website.  Facebook, Flickr and Instagram are hot. Is Pinterest the next big thing?

The talent and enthusiasm of these photographers is contagious. I am looking forward to talking with many of them again next month at the WPPI convention in Las Vegas.  In the meantime, I need to order a couple of Fisheye lenses and a second camera body.

Have you been to a photography show or professional studio lately? What are some of the trends you have noticed?

Portrait by Dixie Dixon Photography

 

Portrait by Amanda Reed Photography

Portrait by Natalie Licini Photography

Portrait by Gene Ho Photography

 

Portrait by Whitney Scott Photography

Portrait by Arising Images Photography

Portrait by Martha Dameron of Vaughn Portrait Park

Portrait by Elise Ellis Photography

Trends in Professional Portraits at Imaging USA

This weekend 10,000 professional photographers convened in San Antonio, Texas for the annual Imaging USA conference. Sponsored by the Professional Photographers of America, the event is an opportunity for photographers to learn from each other and meet with the labs that serve them.

Five trends were apparent in the professional competition prints:

1.  Faux Mattes - Why go to the trouble of making a beveled matte to trim out an image if you can build it right into the image itself.  Classic colors like black and white are most common, but the most interesting mattes use colors and textures pulled from the image itself.

2.  Extreme Contrast, Saturation and Sharpening - It seems impossible for a print to be too crisp.  The same image quality that you would expect from an LED HD TV is now popular for photographic printing.

3.  Artistic Filtering - A professional photograph must look like a painting.  Buy the best Photoshop filters you can find and combine them in interesting ways.

4.  Print on Metal - Several years ago, Kodak introduced a metallic photographic paper which looks great with highly saturated images.  Now labs are bypassing the photographic paper and applying the images directly to sheets of aluminum.

5.  Panoramic book pages - The shift from albums on silver halide paper to books printed on digital presses continues to accelerate.  Increasingly, these books are bound in ways that allow them to open flat and present a seamless two page image.

Photographic purists might be disturbed by these trends, but I feel they bring a freshness to professional photography and help differentiate it from advanced consumer photography.