Hi Fi, Mid Fi , Low-Fi - Head-Fi

Its pretty funny how as the older one gets, the more expensive your hobbies become. First it was model collecting, then its photography and 2 years back it was then high(er) end headphones. Now I've gone through 4 (or 5) expensive headphones (Ultimate Ears, Westone, Audio-Technica that sort...) by now. Seems like a natural progression for guys to go from photography into audio as well it seems. Well everyone needs a drug, and for me its probably some music as well as taking photos I guess. Why so expensive you may ask, afterall the mighty iPod and iBud is sufficient. Surely the blessed Steve Jobs can do no better (or so Mac-olytes say) .

Or so I thought. I've always been into decent earphones, you know the $30 ish ones instead of the given one with your audio player. So I always knew that the given ones sucked. But I didn't know how much it really sucked until I saw a review in a magazine and thought why not? So so begun the downward spiral.... So whats the value of these expensive toys then? The ability for me to really listen to music and appreciate (rather than the music inevitably fading into the background as I do other stuff) the work of artists (its because of this that my CD collection actually grew in a world of iPod....). In periods of stress (like exams), music from these kept me somewhat sane.

Of course, if you want to you can put a price to anything (even human life, just ask insurance firms.....). But price is irrelevant to the experience of being and feeling alive

The Illusion of Stock Photography?

Myself @ Dreamtime (search by user: rapier84)

For many of us, we take photos for the pleasure. At some point we may harbour the thought that our photos may be of value to someone out there. And of course the easiest measure of that worth will be monetary. Photographers would have at some point heard of stock or microstock photography. Basically they act as agents for thousands of photographers whom are able to sell their photos to a worldwide audience without knocking on doors and getting rejected left right and center, in the process validating their creative vision and hopefully go towards funding that shiny new lens/tripod/flash (delete where applicable).

So how true is this. Illusion is all I can say. The lucky few that manage to sell their photos and actually make a living as a stock photographer will of course dispute this. But the saturation of the marketplace by DSLR wielding amatuers means that the internet is flooded with images. At best you get perhaps a dollar or so for every download . Now what is the process the buyer goes through before he even buys your photo that earns you that paltry sum?

First he/she goes to a stock site (shutterstock, i shutter stock, dreamtime etc) and keys in a few words on the search bar on the theme needed. Then thousands of thousands of shots appear. Then the buyer runs through the images and usually buys the first one that he/she sees that suits his/her need (without ever running through the rest, I know because I had the chance to ask the editor of a local magazine). What this means for most photographers on microstock sites is that they usually don't sell anything for a long time if at all, and when they do the stiff competition means that the prices are....well not equal to the effort taken to produce those images in the first place.

So where does that leave photographers? No where, with a dream of selling our work that remains a dream