On his blog yesterday (12/31/09), Vincent Laforet made some interesting predictions for the near future and what it means for photography. Chief among these was that the new upcoming tablets would revolutionize the “print” industry. (Print in quotes because this would rapidly move the industry away from print on paper.) I welcome the idea of paperless publications. Wouldn’t it be great to have a conservation publication without all the environmental costs of the paper production? Not to mention this would eliminate one of the largest costs for the publications.
The problem is will this work? Much of the audience has definitely gotten used to getting content for free in this electronic age. Once folks get used to getting stuff for free, will you be able to get them to pay for it again. One thing I have always found frustrating about this is no one seems to consider the logical conclusion of this modality. If pay dries up for all of the content creators, what will happen to the content in the long run? Sure, I and others love photography enough that we’ll continue, pay or not. However, without the prospect of payment, I won’t upgrade my technology very often, if at all, and major travel will be impossible. Furthermore, I only allow use of my photography for free when it aids a cause that I feel strongly about. Thus, I feel the world of no payment for content will lead to the death of serious content built on research and lots of time. In other words, people will not do the research and other non-fun stuff behind the photography for free.
So, the main question I’m writing about is what will this new technology mean for the world of conservation photography? Well, if Vincent’s predictions hold true, it will be a brave new world leading to an exciting, lucrative, and productive new world for us conservation photographers. The only problem will be that we will need to stay very current on what sort of content is needed from us. The tablets will allow for a wide variety of media to be presented and we will need to make sure that we can provide what is wanted from the major content providers.
I am cautiously optimistic, if publications can solve the problem of monetizing content for the tablets, the near future is bright indeed. That however, is a rather large hurdle.
I suppose there’s also the quasi-socialistic solution; public doesn’t pay for the content, but in return supports the lifestyle of the content creators. Do you think America would like that alternative?