2021 and the Future of Photography
At the end of 2020, in fact, as I write this it is January 1, 2021, I’m not really interested in looking back on the past year. It was a difficult year for me and many others for many reasons. Instead, I’d like to look forward to what’s in store for 2021, not only for this show, but for Studio Builder, for me, and photography as a whole, as a profession and an industry.
What’s in Store for Studio Builder in 2021?
As I mentioned in previous episodes, I am working on developing a Studio Builder YouTube channel, and that is a lot of work. I bumped up my Creative Cloud subscription, I’ve started re-learning Premier, which I haven’t touched in a decade, and I’ve got an absolute TON of ideas for videos that I’ll be working on. It’s going to have tutorials on a bunch of things from Capture One to Sprout Studio to Zapier, interviews, BTS videos, website reviews, and so much more. I’m also planning on hosting live stream chats with the Studio Builder family on the YouTube channel, which is another whole ball of wax and learning. But I’m down for it. I’m here for you.
I’m also working on a number of digital products that can make people’s lives easier, from processing their images to building their websites, and that’s all I’m going to say about that right now. One thing at a time and that first thing is the YouTube channel and converting my home office into a functional video studio. I ordered some light stand and camera mount clamps for my desk and they should be here in the next couple of weeks.
Predicting the Future of Photography for 2021
As for the world of photography, I have three big predictions that I think we’re going to see make major headway in the world of photography in 2021. They are AI and Machine Learning, increased use of CGI, and a dramatic decrease in competition.
Artificial Intelligence
Let’s start with AI and Machine Learning. People often use the term AI when they actually mean machine learning. AI is when a program does the work for you, and machine learning is when a program learns from the work you do and then you can apply that learning to other work.
For example, when Photoshop’s Liquify filter or Luminar 4 are able to recognize faces in photographs, that’s an AI engine doing that work. The AI engine has been built from previous machine learning cycles, getting better and better learning to recognize faces with the help of human verification. That Artificial Intelligence is learning and it can then later apply that knowledge automatically based on its past learning cycles.
Photoshop recently added a sky replacement feature to its software, something Luminar has had for at least a year, and they are expanding on their machine learning and AI integration. I know a retoucher who is actively working with Adobe to help create a process that will allow Photoshop to watch their editing process on one image and then apply the same techniques in the same style to subsequent images. I can see this going further by having Photoshop learn your editing techniques and apply your retouching techniques with a single click, and even further still, by learning from all the retouchers and people using Photoshop to create a highly intelligent one-click retouching engine in Photoshop.
Luminar has some of these features, and I have started using Luminar to edit some of my headshots. It does skin corrections very quickly with a click and slider, has a great face light feature and some portrait settings, and you can copy and apply adjustments across multiple images because it uses artificial intelligence to apply the adjustments instead of fixed pixels on fixed layers. It’s a very affordable product and worth the investment.
CGI Graphics
Something that I’ve seen commercial photographers tinkering with over the past couple of years is the incorporation of computer-generated imagery (CGI) into their work. I’ve been seeing a lot more photographers investing time, money and energy into programs like Blender, Cinema 4D, and a big uptick in the use of Adobe Dimension, to add graphic text to commercial work, creating whole worlds for their composites, and even taking portrait work to a new level.
I think a lot of people, including photographers would be surprised to know just how much CGI is used in the commercial world these days. A lot of the car photography you see is all CGI. Every single image in the IKEA catalogue that does not contain a human is 100% CGI. That blew my mind when I found that out a couple of years ago. I was looking at images and could have sworn they were real and then I saw an article breaking down some of the images and I was shocked.
So, I think that will also mean a lot fewer hero images and the continual increase of creating image libraries for campaigns instead of just a few key visuals. It feels like an Adobe AI-based retouching feature will be right on time.
Decrease in Competition + Increase in Demand
I think we’ll see a continual decrease in competition as the pandemic sadly continues to prove too much for many photographers to endure. I know a few photographers who have closed their doors and moved on to other careers in the past year, increasing as the year went on. This whole podcast and the development of new Studio Builder initiatives is because I realized in a very hard way that my business was not pandemic proof.
In 2021, especially now with an even more contagious strain of the virus, we’ll continue to see more and more photographers closing their businesses and leaving the industry until we can get to herd immunity and start working safely again. In Canada, it’s going to be at least six months before we get there, and in some places even longer than that.
Also, because we haven’t been able to operate for a good chunk of the past year, clients are going to want to get family photos done, when they missed out on opportunities. Weddings will return and a lot of families, who are learning the value of photography as a part of their family legacy, will want to schedule sessions, driving up demand for photography services.
So, in about six months, I think we’ll see a dramatic increase in demand for photography with a continued decrease in supply of photographers, creating a lot of opportunities for bookings and growth during June through September.
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