If you have been around the photographic industry for any length of time, you have to be wondering what in the world is going on out there. With more and more photographers flooding the marketplace, how will we all survive?  What will the photographic industry look like in the near future?  Our best hope for understanding what tomorrow will bring is looking to the past.  History, my friends, will give us the best clue to what the future will hold.

To illustrate this, let us take a look at what took place in the early eighties about the time I was just starting out as a photographer.  I remember there was this new buzz that permeated the photographic circles.  It was to change the future of photography, and sure enough, it did.  It was this thing called “Stock Photography”.  Just about every photographer I knew was trying to get on the bandwagon.  It also opened a floodgate for droves of new photographers trying to get a piece of the action.  Its negative impact on the photographic industry was far greater that anyone could have ever imagined.  

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