[mike]

I'm not disagreeing, I just like to put some other thoughts to it:

 

Don't think that way. Photography until then was dealing with kind of complicated stuff, paying loads of money for prints which were "never the way I saw it" - lack of technique, sure. But if not a lot people were in photography, how would Kodak have sold millions of film rolls per year? Only for the pros?

 

Hmmm, I didn't mean to come off that way or sound negative! I think it's great that many people are into photography! It creates competition, innovation, keeps prices down, and great new talent keeps emerging. However, there was definitely an SLR boom in the early 2k's (at least in the USA). Many of the people I know who jumped into the DSLRs back then have more or less moved on. At least their enthusiasm has waned.

 

 

Even here: Availability of complex, yet easy to handle technique makes it so easy to try a picture until I'm happy. Selfies, food porn, party shots, weddings with thousands of pictures are pretty cheap to make and so a lot of people get into it. First taste is with a smartphone. People do print, but the send their own postcards these days, their own invitations, menus, photobooks to look at pictures offline, whatever - labs have business. Posters are so much less complicated to do, 8 × 10" prints? no problem, black and white or color. Photography has become more approachable, more affordable for people who want to express themselves and feel unfit to draw or paint.

 

We should not become defenders or lawyers of photo industry - it's the way it is, it has become more easy to snap a memory and tell others - but to create a picture worth looking at is still the same fight, learning, work, effort and patience. I think the joy of watching a great picture, drawn, painted or printed will remain.

 

I totally agree about the accessibility and affordability of photography. At the pyramids EVERYONE had their smartphones out taking pictures. That's not an exaggeration!

 

It sounds like some things are different in Switzerland. I can't even think of full fledge camera store where I live (~1 million people metro). Most, sadly, are gone. There's a handful of fine print shops. There's one shop I use for prized photos. Otherwise I just go to a kiosk at the local Walgreens, still fine quality. My GF kids (HS through 25) and their friends are constantly taking pictures. But never print.

 

I must admit I'm guilty about doing that too nowadays. I tend to put my vacation photos in albums on Facebook and only print what I may want to hang on the wall. It saddens me sometimes that I can't, easily, do that with trips I made a long time ago.Worse is my ex wife was a scrapbooker and took all the old albums