8/18/2014

GETTING INDEXED



Visual ideas combined with technology combined with personal interpredation equals photography. [Arnold Newman]


   Once there was a time when this sentence has its validity. Once there was a time when quality was more important than quantity,  the quality of a picture was more important than the quality of self-marketing. As a photographer you had a solid (year-long) education, in some countries (e.g. in Austria) a master craftsman degree was required for having a photographic business. The measure of your success was the quality of your work. And not the number of "clicks" your photographs are achieving, not your ranking on search engines.

Then came the Internet. And digital photography. And the phrase "If you buy a violin you own a violin. If you buy a camera you're a photographer" became a (sad) reality . Worldwide newspaper publishers are firing veteran photographers and are replaceing them with iPhones. In art not the quality of a photo is decisive, not the statement, the aesthetics, but the sales price only . Photo orders are only rarely awarded according to criteria such as quality, reliability, visual ideas and their implementation. Much more important today the "search algorithms", "keyword density", "meta tags", "canonical link elements". etc. In science there exist the rule "Publish or Perish". For a photographer applies accordingly: "SEO or perish". And so you spend hours and hours with "contextual advertising" or "behavioral targeting". And it stays on one end to perhaps 20% of its time to get creative. 

Brave new world ...

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