Over the past few years, video has surged to the top, largely driven by social media algorithms. This shift has led some photographers to diversify and offer video alongside their photos, but how long will that trend last? New research by Zenfolio and Format shows photo and video creators The numbers are down dramatically compared to last year’s numbers. The same survey also shows that about half of photographers use artificial intelligence, but only 2% of them use techniques to generate images from scratch.
The State of the Photography Industry 2023 is a biannual survey of more than 2,000 participating photographers. This year there were many photographers from the United States, but there were also many participants from the United Kingdom, Canada and Australia. The research was conducted by his Zenfolio and Format, the companies behind the website and sales platform for photographers.
There are many statistics included in this study, but one of the more surprising numbers is the shift in creators who combine photos and videos. In last year’s survey, 64% of her respondents only took photos, and 34% took both photos and videos. In the most recent survey, completed in February 2023, 70% only took pictures and only 17% dabbled in both.
Despite social media prioritizing video, video-only platforms like TikTok remain at the bottom of their marketing efforts. Only 1.6% of photographers earn more than $100,000 compared to 1% of photographers earning less than $10,000.
Does that mean the video is on the way? necessarily. His two companies, conducting research and research itself, focus primarily on photographers. Many of the respondents are likely using Zenfolio and Format. That means the study doesn’t say much about the state of the videography industry, or the photogenic video creators such as social media influencers. This statistic does not indicate a problem in the videography industry.
However, it does suggest that fewer photographers feel the need to diversify and add video to their repertoire. Some photographers have added video services as cameras can now do both in his one device. Others invest in high-definition video cameras and create still images for printing. Some platforms even theorize that this process of capturing stills from video will eventually replace event photography. It suggests fewer photographers than in previous years. This is great news for photographers who feel the video pressure from social media but lack the time and desire to diversify.
About half of photographers use AI, and AI is the good kind
The study also delved into the growth of AI in photography. While only 20% of participants thought the technology was good, nearly half said they had integrated AI into their workflows. About 36% say they use this technology occasionally, and nearly 14% use it regularly.
However, only 2% admitted to using an AI photo generator. Most use this technology for sharpening and noise reduction. This is followed by Auto Subject, Background Removal and Skin Smoothing. Facial recognition and photo sorting were also on the list.
Generative AI has been criticized, mostly by the photography community. From a copyright lawsuit over training data to a photographer who won a photo contest using AI images to prove a point. But not all AI is wrong. 91% of those surveyed named editing among their top three time-consuming tasks. About 41% say they want to spend less time editing. Besides the obvious answer of getting the camera right, AI-based technology is already helping make that possible. See Lightroom’s ability to automatically select skin and teeth for portraits, and Photoshop’s ability to detect and select subjects.
There is a mistake in using AI. It is the generation of images without properly labeling them as computer-generated. Only 2% of respondents said they used an AI photo generator.
