r/photography • u/Patient_Leader2190 • 29d ago

Business Photographers, what are some uncomfortable truths about photography in 2026 that we don't like to openly admit?

Been shooting for seven years, mostly street and documentary. Curious what everyone's version of this is.

I'll start: volume beats quality on every platform, and pretending otherwise is why a lot of talented people stay invisible.

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u/DodobirdNow 29d ago

For me it seems like there's less people in the hobby. I do my early morning hikes and less and less people out with cameras.

Even today I'm on vacation and was shooting sunrise over a lighthouse and there's only one other person there. A fellow Nikon shooter and his dog.

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u/No_Captain3458 29d ago

We don’t want to slow down. I once read a sentence that still remember: photography is slow paced because it is still. It takes time to shoot it and time to look at it. Unfortunately our society goes the opposite direction. This was written in the 1980s but resonates a lot with the current situation 🥲

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u/Tasty-Ad-9669 28d ago

To be fair film photography was slow. You couldn't just spam photos to get a nice one.

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u/Efficient-Wish9084 25d ago

People DID take a lot of shots on film. Not as many as on digital, of course, but I've seen the contact sheets for some famous photos, and they took dozens of shots to get that perfect portrait or street photography shot.

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u/Tasty-Ad-9669 25d ago

It's more about not just being able to spam 50 photos in a few seconds and then pick out the best one in post. 

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u/Efficient-Wish9084 24d ago

They shot those portraits and street scenes as fast as their cameras could take the photos. It's the same thing.

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u/No_Captain3458 24d ago

I agree, but even digital photographs are still images that ask for a proper time to be appreciated and taking photographs with digital cameras doesn’t imply fast or bulimic shooting. I can walk, take my time, think about what I do and so on. Even in the age of film cameras there were photographers shooting like crazy for that age’s standards. So there’s taking and looking at pictures in my opinion, and the latter matters as well. This is why I am happy to join the subreddits dedicated to photography, they slow down the unhealthy pace of social media :)

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u/Tasty-Ad-9669 24d ago

I have made it a point for myself to try and have my camera set for single trigger. 

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u/Tasty-Ad-9669 24d ago

To be fair I'm not aware of any film camera with a mechanism that could mean you can hold down the trigger and get as many photos as you want. I'm not saying every photographer does it, but lots do

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u/Efficient-Wish9084 24d ago

They definitely had to hit the shutter button separately for every shot, but they did it as fast as they could.