>Bullshit. Utter bullshit.
I don't get this angry when commenting here but the disgusting lack of empathy continually expressed on HN really, really gets to me.
What is more disgusting is the millions of people who make massive contributions, but aren't mentioned.
Taking photos is just recording light that exists. You can change the position, lighting, a few options on the camera, but it's easy enough to say that for a given location, probably a few thousand photos would cover most of the possibles.
Writing involves thought. After you've typed even a few characters you're past a few thousand possible combinations. Brute forcing writing isn't feasible.
And what about when your camera floats around automatically getting every available shot, every available composition, framing, leaving you to just select the best?
There are only so many parameters that make up a recording of light. Sorry, but I do not see a massive amount of skill involved in it now that you can brute force most of it, or have it automatically done for you.
We've also been fed so many fantastic photos online etc, that we rarely go "wow" any more. For all we know it could be a photo, a photoshop, a CGI. What was once amazing is now often the norm.
I really wouldn't like to be a professional photographer these days, as I just don't think you can make much money at it.
I wasn't stating an opinion. I was stating the facts.
As technology has progressed, it has meant that instead of very few producers and millions of consumers of 'content', now everyone produces content. That means the value of 'content' has drastically reduced to the point that it's almost worthless for some areas.
This is progress, and you can't stop it.
Of course art is valuable, as it has always been. But as stated elsewhere, there are a billion pictures of a sunset online... supply far outstrips demand.
And yes, as a programmer, you can either work to keep your source code secret, or you can provide software as a service, charge for support, or any number of other monetization options. But you can't really sell open source software without some reason for people to buy it.
> Taking good photographs is as hard as it always was.
Untrue. With digital, you can take 1,000 photos and chances are one will be fantastic. You can brute force brilliance. That wasn't true before digital.
Photos are simply recording something that exists. It's not creating art as such (IMHO). So unlike painting / writing books / writing code, you could just sit a monkey there with a good camera, variety of lenses, filters, etc and have him take a fantastic photo sooner or later.
Don't get me wrong, I love taking photos, and try to make my photos better each time, try to learn what settings, composure etc will make the best photo etc. But at the same time, pretty soon you'll have cameras that take a billion photos all at the same time with every available setting, then allow you to navigate through and select the best.
Taking photos then just comes down to judging what makes a good photo, which most people can do (And can also be automated by surveying people or doing A/B testing etc).
> You know, it is pretty easy to kill someone. That doesn't mean it's morally acceptable, let alone legal. It doesn't matter how easy it is to copy the photograph. It's still not morally acceptable or legal.
If you kill me, it affects me. If you copy a photo of mine, I haven't lost anything. It's a bad analogy.
A webapp is run as a service. You're charging people for a service you provide. That makes it very hard to copy.
A photo isn't a service. It's a collection of bytes that is trivial to copy.
If you want to make money as a photographer, you need to structure it in a way that means it's hard to copy. But these days, anyone can take pro quality photos with minimal talent. If he's an exceptional photographer, he should be able to charge for his time when taking photos. But that's about it.
With the music industry, artists can move from selling CDs to doing more live tours. Not sure that's something photographers can really do.
What is more disgusting is the millions of people who make massive contributions, but aren't mentioned.