Our workshop instructor Jay Goodrich is continuing his interview series with Art. Today he is discussing the future of photography and the age of digital. For more info on Jay you can visit his blog or website.

Jay Goodrich

You had a recent article in ‘Outdoor Photographer’ about stock photography and with the seemingly collapse of stock photography industry, where do you think the future photographers will be able to make money?

Art Wolfe

I think photographers will always make money and I think that we’re looking at pretty tough times right now. I think that we’re looking at a time from when we were represented by large corporations and that has really been undermined, to the time where we can use social media, Internet, and all of that and find our new way and using new means of presenting our work through the Internet. I think there’s a lot of opportunities.

I can’t say unequivocally this will happen but I have every reason to believe that there will be new markets, new means, new showcases and in many ways they’ll be easier than before to get one’s work in front of mass audiences. Before you had to rely on the whims of the editor, like Getty or any other stock agency, the whims of whether a book publisher wanted to publish your work. You were really at the mercy of somebody else’s decision. The entrepreneurial photographers can grow and succeed.

It’s not like it’s just plug it in and it’s a done deal. Everybody’s going to have to work. I think the challenge is to come up with unique work. I think that we live at a time where people are inspired by the work of others to the point where they just simply go out and copy and I don’t think that’s going to work. I think people have to find new ways and in fact I’m seeing it happen.

There’s a lot of new energy out there, a lot of new ideas. So I have a hopeful look towards the future but I also know that it’s no longer going to be just simply appropriate that people photograph nature and make money from it. I think it’s a moral obligation that people that make a living from nature, or even a little bit of money from nature, care about what they’re photographing and try to preserve it so that they’ll have subjects, we have an environment, down the road.

Jay Goodrich

With the advances in digital cameras, do you think photography is going to lose its medium? By this I mean will there no longer be anything tangible to it? Will it all exist on a computer as a file that sits on someone’s hard drive and if so is that a good thing or a bad thing for photography?

Art Wolfe

It is a kind of interesting thing, because I’m, as I said before, I was kind of brought up with tangible things. Paper, brushes, wet ink, wet paint. Film was something you had in your hand but the minute you turned that digital capture into a print you have something tangible. And it’s just you have to be comforted with the fact that, for me to actually do a dissertation of what digital actually is, it’s almost laughable. But I get what it is. It’s a series of pixels that are captured and laid out. I’m fine with that because I know that I can capture, even though it’s not a tangible something I hold, it’s something way better than what I could have had before. In other words, film, a romanticized film, but it had its limitations. It could go away easily and so if people are resolute about maintaining their digital capture and refreshing it every once in a while, you could argue that is so much pure of a medium in terms of being able to make identical copies and preserving it, where film could change if somebody was right on it, with the latest technology, you just keep rewriting it until a pressure copy.

Jay Goodrich

Do you think that digital photography has opened up your creativity to levels that you’ve never thought possible?

Art Wolfe

Oh absolutely. There’s, and I often say that during the course of my classes where I show a photo taken of two fur seals fighting on a very dreary dark, dank day in South Georgia Island where I’m bouncing up and down on a raft right at the ocean’s edge. I couldn’t even have imagine taking a picture that was worth anything six, seven years ago and yet now I can pop up the ISO to 800, take a crisp sharp shot of the jaws agape and fighting, with the water splashing, and get a shot that I can use. That was just a fantasy before.

So I embrace the technology, I certainly love the ability to stitch together individual images and to make up a very large file that I can blow up large on a wall. I can pre-create formats that I couldn’t have done a handful of years ago. I would have had to bring, as I did, panoramic cameras and 35mm cameras. And even on one occasion a medium format camera. Today I can use a 35mm and build whatever format I needed.

Jay Goodrich

That’s good. What advice would you have for an aspiring pro?

Art Wolfe

I think to know your field, know who’s doing what, find out what stories might be under photographed. Environments under – you have to be newsy these days. Again there’s an entire genre of nature photographers that are just content photographing in their new local neighborhoods or in their national parks, at their own back door, and I think that’s fine.

It really boils down to whatever makes you happy. If you are an aspiring professional photographer I think you’re going to have to push yourself a little harder than the tens of thousands of recreational photographers that are pleased just to take a picture that makes them happy. I think everything’s valid in that world, but certainly the professionals will have to become a little more business orientated. There’s so many out there now that you just can’t decide you’re going to go through the South West and photograph the great national parks and make a living from it. It’s just not going to happen.

Jay Goodrich

That leads me to my next question. Most people don’t know that you were a teacher. Tell us a little bit about that.

Art Wolfe

Well, I’m one of those people that sees nobility in teaching, and I love sharing ideas, I always have. Every book I have done over the last 20 years had certainly a lot of information about what I used and how I photographed it and the F stops and so forth. I’ve done a couple of books that were moderately successful, probably the most successful was called the Art of Photographing Nature. I like inspiring people and I like teaching. So – I learned through the teaching process. Right now I’m about to embark on a major swing through America at the end of May and early June, teaching full day seminars in New York and D.C., Toronto, Chicago, Minneapolis, Los Angeles. And the idea is concentrating really on finding and photographing subjects, because whether you’re a professional or an amateur, the challenge for all of us is finding out there in that 360 degree view, subjects. You know, pulling it out, to see it with the eye and your imagination, framing it and making and maximizing the most compelling and emotionally impacting photos is the challenge, and that’s what I’m going to concentrate on.

I’ll draw from 30 years of travel and find some of my most iconic images, but also the photos leading up to those images, and so it’s a natural step. You know, a lot of people have this misconception that one walks right up to a photo and takes an iconic image and just walks away; one click of the camera. And in fact it’s usually a series of incrementally better framed photos to where you arrive at the best shot, or so you think. So I like to show that; I call that deconstructing the image, and there will be certainly many, many series exemplifying that. And so, I think, you know, through the – through a fairly thoughtful explanation and a series of photos to back up the explanation, is a really great teaching method, and that’s what I’m going to be doing.

Jay Goodrich

I’ll ask you, but you kind of just answered it, maybe you’ll agree or not, but I’ve seen many of your instructional lectures in your workshops. You used your work in an inspiring way to show people how to become better photographers, and has your teaching background been a driving force behind you creating those lectures and giving that information?

Art Wolfe

Yeah, I love the challenge of actually conveying ideas and thoughts to people. If you really boil down the work that I’ve done as a photographer, it’s really about educating people on why this might be important, what’s special about that environment. Almost everything I’ve ever intentionally photographed has been uplifting and inspiring. And I draw from that. The way I live in my house in Seattle, as you look around this room where we’re doing this interview, there’s a lot of artwork on the wall. The window showcases a garden out there that I’ve worked on. Everything I do is uplifting; it’s educational. I try to bring importance to that twisted tree outside the door or that piece of art work over there or the photograph that I’ve just taken. And so, it’s about educating, inspiring, uplifting and I do that through the teaching process.

So I teach through the photos I take, and I don’t know how I can easily close that in a very eloquent way, but I think you get it.

Jay Goodrich

What are some of the challenges in teaching and how do you overcome them?

Art Wolfe

Well, I don’t think that there’s many challenges. Actually I think that the biggest challenge for me from teaching really is getting the people that would always take a class from you informed that there’s actually a class. So I think this harks back to the age of digital now where we can use the internet, digital – let’s not say digital but the internet on getting the word out there. Certainly blogs like what we’re discussing this for is a way of actually imparting information out to people, letting them know what’s coming up so they have the ability to sign up for class or not or know about a body of work or not, or know what our colleagues are doing. I think it’s a great age we live in, where communication is going to be and continue to be right at our finger tips.

Jay Goodrich

And can we expect more workshops from Art Wolfe in the near future?

Art Wolfe

I think you can not only expect more workshops, but more and varied content. You know, whether it’s the form of the TV show that I host, the new black and whites that I’m doing or whatever project might be floating out there, there’s a lot of books that I’d like to tell the story of. One of which might be about climate change and how it’s going to increase the number of climate refugees out there. I think it’s a great story to tell. It’s not a happy story to tell, but I think you can tell that story eloquently and with emotion, and make people feel what that’s all about….