Recently a friend of mine wanted a set of images of birds for making a calendar for his organization. I went with a collection of about hundred odd images of birds. My friend showed those images to another person in their organization (looked like a person in their marketing department) and asked his views on what images to select. This person browsed through my collection spending a second or less on a few of my images and gave a quick judgment on what is a “beautiful image” and what is not ! In his scale the above image does not look good and the below one is a good image because he felt two birds is frame is better than one. While I don’t have a preference or great liking for both of these images (now), my first reaction was this person needs a course on “appreciation of images”. My second reaction was – who am I to dictate right taste for him ? He is right based on his scale of reference, more so being a potential customer. While I don’t make my living from nature photography today I immediately realized the challenge of professional nature photographers who live on nature photography alone.
Several of us do nature photography since it is a passion for us. My belief is one produces quality work if her mind and soul is in that work. Can it happen if I have to make images to suit others taste ? I think this can become an interesting challenge in making nature photography as a profession. To pay school fee of his daughter I would not be surprised if a professional nature photographer resort to extensive digital editing to suit needs of his clients. I am not at all saying every professional nature photographer will do this but I won’t be surprised if some of them do especially when there are floods of “low” cost images of nature available for potential buyers !
