Photo woes...

Oh Internet, I just have to get something off my chest. It's no secret that I've been desperately trying to book more jobs lately. Mainly weddings, since I do live in the wedding capitol of the world and it is the most efficient use of my shooting time. Well, I've never before had to try and land wedding gigs. They've always just fallen into my lap and I was as busy as I wanted to be. But lately, now that I actually need to have an income, there are no weddings for me. And I know why. It's not just because I'm a mediocre photographer. It's because everyone and their uncle who has ever bought a decent SLR digital camera at Costco is now a professional photographer. Five years ago there was a handful of great wedding photographers in this area. I knew or had heard of most of them. We were shooting film, we HAD to know what we were doing! We had to get it right in camera...film was a serious investment. Now, there are HUNDREDS if not THOUSANDS of wedding photographers around here. Some of them are just plain awful. And some of them are incredible. Some of the incredible ones never even got a degree in photography like yours truly, and that really depresses me. I've been blog-stalking a lot of them lately and it just makes me want to put down my camera forever. It's just so depressing. John Telford was right: Inexpensive, quality digital cameras are the death of serious photography.