Everyone can use a pencil , can everyone can write book/create a Rembrandt .?
This is all the change in Tech is. Paint at one time was hand ground, restricting its use to those who could afford a person to do said grinding. Then it became cheaper ( like camera’s ) The skills do not reside within the materials but with the person wielding them.

- the cost of practicing/getting reps is much cheaper. i can experiment in a way that wasn’t possible before digital existed
- i don’t have to worry as much about things like focus because auto-focus
- i have more latitude in exposure mistakes because of RAW
- i don’t have to be an expert in photoshop b/c there are actions that can get me where i want
- i can take high ISO photos that were simply impossible with film

does the reliance on technology make me less of a photographer? no, i don’t think so. i think because i’ve had the chance to make mistakes, i’m a competent photographer who doesn’t need the technology as much now.

there were times when painters can hold their own, but some of the guys in my town and around it are in for painful demise, nobody care about paintings anymore, they can download any high res pictures on the internet, print it with personal printers, buy some plastic frame and be done with it.

for the painters around here, there seems to be no business model left to try, not even when they abdicate themselves under some wealthy businessmen.

painters, and chefs comes to that, in my opinion have more integrity to show rather than photographers, it is ultimately not their tools, but their skills, there are no computer chips within those brushes and frying pans, cameras on the other hand have white balance sets and image controls controlled by some algorithms made by the people in the industry, they take some parts in any bytes of images we make. this is one of the issue that has been bothering me. and lets not talk about the lens purists among us who claim that quality pictures are just impossible to produced without those L series or golden rings lenses, any less way of taking “professional” pictures are just an abomination.

I’m sorry but i guess professionals are only about selling stuffs for money, there are a lot of factors there, from sweet talking your prospective clients to reading the color trends, quality might be way down there among our shopping list, that is, if we have the same assumption about quality with the buyers.

(2) The Zacuto Great Camera Shootout this year incuded an iPhone up against $65,000 cameras like the Red, Alexa, and Sony F65. In the evaluation sessions, there were some people who got very angry that such a low-end camera was included in a shootout for pros against top-end pro gear. They saw obvious problems with the iPhone images compared to what the really good sensors can do — banding and noise in the shadows, obviously poorer range into highlights, etc. But I saw those shootout results projected on a screen in a theater (not just on the web), and I have to say that the iPhone shots stood up very well against many “middle range” cameras that many of us use professionally every day. But then, in talking with the guys who shot that video with iPhone, it turned out they had to do all sorts of things to get that level of quality out of it: lots more careful lighting in the shadow areas, much more careful exposure control (they had to use a hacked phone with a special app), and lots more post-processing for color and exposure correction than the big boys used. Even so, with the proper knowledge of how to do it (and the time to experiment until you get it right), you can get some amazing shots out of a camera costing $300 plus a 2-year service contract.

(3) People have had cheap point-and-shoot cameras for 50+ years. Film processing has been relatively cheap and easily available. Students have been graduating from art centers and photography schools in droves, far out-stripping the demand for new professional photographers. How much has a typical day rate gone up over the last 25 years compared to inflation? (Or, rather, how far DOWN?) So, what’s new? What’s new is that the cost of doing photography has gotten to be essentially free.

(4) Does having specialized gear make a difference? Sometimes. But if all the special equipment you have is an off-camera flash and an umbrella, why would I need to give you several hundred dollars to take my kids’ “portraits”? I can go out at sunset next to a white wall and take some great shots on my smartphone. I can snap off hundreds of shots until I get one I like. I can take my thumb drive down to the neighborhood print shop and get as large an image as I want — even without the internet. With the internet, I can send my photo anywhere I want as many times as I want and don’t need you at all. You’ll have to convince me that you can do something that I can’t (without my spending a lot of my time and effort or money) to get a really good “special” image of those kids. (Substitute “actor”, “car”, “food”, etc., for “kids” as appropriate.) You have to show me why the way you point your camera will produce noticably better images than the way I point my camera.

Photography itself has always been comprised of three basic things:
- ability to “see” (envision) what you are going to get when you press the shutter (e.g., with a certain exposure/aperture/focal length/framing)
- ability to light a scene so that you get what you need onto the film/sensor
- ability to post-process the captured image to produce the output image you want (on paper, on film, or on a digital display, or whatever medium you intend)

Especially for commercial photographers/cinematographers, add to that the ability to envision a scene in advance and work with team(s) of people to construct the setting that will allow you to capture what you envisioned as an image on a sensor. Sometimes you’ll need that $20,000 lens on a $50,000 camera rig (and the grip and lighting gear and crew to go with it) to pull that off. Sometimes you won’t.

There are niches (architectural/interior photography, or war/news correspondent, for example) where having a modicum of those skills can still be economically viable. It turns out that there are actually very few people who can do all four of those things well, including many who claim to be “professional photographers”. Those who can will always be in demand. Those who can’t — well, increasingly, we’ll have to go find real jobs.