Over the best part of the last 30 years, pixels have replaced grains and algorithms have usurped darkroom chemistry for almost every application of photography in the creative industries. You don’t need me to tell you why. If we remove our rose-tinted glasses for a moment, it’s clear that when full frame professional cameras became available to the mass consumer in the early 2000s, it made life so much easier. The price, availability, technology and general logistics of producing professional film photography now makes it almost inconceivable to think about it being a replacement for the digital world.
But does that tell the whole truth? The fact is, being a photographer today is harder than ever. With superlative quality available on devices that are getting smaller and smaller (such as with the best camera phones), not to mention the ability of AI to leap ahead of a human’s ability to capture the essence of a glossy brochure image, it’s left us asking what comes next for an industry that's heyday feels firmly rooted in the previous century.
