This is Russ Klettke's interview with Brian Dilg, who is Chair of Photography at the Photography School at the New York Film Academy. In addition to 20 years of professional teaching experience around the world, Dilg's work has been published in The New York Times, Time Out, Village Voice and covers of books published by Simon and Schuster, Random House and Hyperion. He has also worked in post-production for major fashion houses, consumer products manufacturers and media organizations. He also has won awards as a filmmaker and worked as a director, cinematographer and editor of narrative, documentary, music video and commercial films.

Q: What do you tell photography students about careers in the industry?

As an instructor at a New York-based school of photography (The Photography School at the New York Film Academy), I regularly provide advice to student commercial photographers and photojournalists about the kinds of careers they may achieve. It is hugely beneficial for them to envision the heights to which they can aspire – we are is New York, after all, where you can become the best of the best in almost every endeavor – but it is also essential to consider the entry point at which one can enter the profession.

I have a quick way of summarizing what a career in photography likely will entail. In your first job, you probably will be someone’s assistant, and a lot of your time will not involve taking pictures. Across the later arc of your career, you are likely to be self-employed and therefore must have business skills – in addition to your acumen and artistry as a photographer.

Q: So, they are to start from the ground up – but does that mean actually taking photos?

Let’s discuss first things first. The role of the photographer’s assistant, or someone who works in the administrative and support side of photography, is not just about paying dues. You will learn vital parts of what makes a photographer valuable to his or her clients and their craft. Between what you shoot and what is ultimately used in print editorial, multimedia advertising or online publications there is a lot of editing, organizing, legal documentation, processing and selling. Long-term, every photographer has to know how this works and how to manage it.

Q: We suppose this varies, depending on the type of photographer the student hopes to be one day, yes?

The specific path you wish to take – smaller-scale commercial (including weddings), larger-scale commercial (fashion and advertising photography), and photojournalism – would likely involve these entry level positions:

Smaller-scale commercial – Most established photographers need assistants to help with lighting, equipment, on-location support and administrative tasks. Work with a pro and learn to be a pro. Often, the assistant will price out a job (some use contract templates found on Blinkbid.com) and handle client contact to some extent.

Larger-scale commercial – The digitech assistant on advertising, high-end fashion and other large-budget commercial shoots may appear to be the most popular person in the production. As they work on the computer tethered to the camera, clients and talent might be clustered around them as they identify whether or not the shoot is getting them what is intended – in real time. The work doesn’t end there, as a lot of organizing and file backup is required post-production, along the path that selected images take to become a final product.

Photojournalism – While the budgets for photojournalists are shrinking for print media, rare is the project where the assistant can travel with the photographer to newsworthy locales – unfortunately. But there is plenty for the photojournalist’s assistant to do in the office: editing, cropping, backing up files, processing prints and communicating and invoicing are all in their role. This person gets a first-hand look at what clients (media) want and need, and the value they place on good images.

Of course, assistants in each category need to be working on developing their own skills and portfolio, even when that is not their full-time responsibility. For example, the photojournalist should seek out local media assignments, enough to develop credits and tear sheets. Commercial photographers-in-training should jump at any opportunity to work with smaller clients.

Q: Is it essential for the photographer to also be a businessperson?

Concurrent with developing a portfolio, the photographer needs to become comfortable with the business imperatives of a photography career. Indeed, the first job for photographers is to get to know the business. In addition to the skills development mentioned above, the future independent photographer needs to understand the importance of selling in their career. By selling, we mean relationship development. You’re only as good as you hope to be and working as much as you want when clients know you and trust you. That boils down to a personal style, your professionalism, how fun you are to work with and your ability to establish reasonable expectations on the part of your clients – on top of providing top-quality photography.

Do you agree that the first job for photographers who are either professionals or want to go pro should be to get to know the business? Sound off below in the comments section. Your voice counts!

Emily Buchanan is a writer and blogger working for Howling Basset, a network of wedding photographers in Kent, UK. She'd cautiously call herself an amateur photographer and prefers to shoot with film (she, too, has a serious case of OCN and it is contagious). Follow Howling Basset on Twitter and Facebook.

By now, it’s a dated debate.Does the ease of a digital dark room hinder the legitimacy of an image or are we all just suffering from a strand of OCN (Obsessive Compulsive Nostalgia) bought on by digitalisation and social anxiety? Has the accessibility of photography served to dilute its artistry? Is this affected by the contemporary culture of cataloguing life online? Well?

In this ever-updating age, questions rotate in a perpetual thought-storm like transient objects of wonder. We are barely granted the time to form an opinion before the Next Big Thing has flipped the industry on its head and it’s time to reassess contemporary culture again. But whichever side of the fence you find yourself on, it’s important to take a balanced approach.

In 1936 Walter Benjamin wrote, “In the age of mechanical reproduction, art gradually loses its traditional and ritualistic value.” This theory bridged two states of human progression and so two states of art. The dust had barely settled since the Industrial Revolution and the Second World War was about to provoke an accelerated fast-forward into the modern age. What, then, would Benjamin make of art and mechanical reproduction today and which party would he align himself with?

Andy Stonier of Howling Basset defines one school of thought, “I believe there's no real difference between digital and analogue photography in terms of photographic art. They're merely different techniques for capturing a scene. Whether the image created is on film or a CCD it matters little; what counts is the idea.”

And sure, there’s a lot of weight to this argument. Quality photography is dictated by a certain compassion and understanding of the subject, alongside an innovative idea that challenges social conceptions or embellishes a moment, not to mention composition and technical now-how.

The trouble is, quality photography can be achieved using both digital and analogue cameras, it’s just that one instrument is distinctly more convenient than the other. Long have photographers bemoaned the loss of romanticism and solitude that came hand-in-hand with a day in the dark room. And indeed, it just doesn’t feel quite as poetic to plug a camera into a laptop and fiddle with exposure on Photoshop. Rick Adam of Destroy Everything shares this second school of thought, citing the skill involved in analogue photography compared to the point-and-shoot culture that’s now encouraged by social networking, “You have to be a lot more resourceful when shooting film,” says Adam in an interview with Digg Magazine, “for one you shoot fewer photos, but in doing so I think you learn a lot more about composition, lighting, etc… Looking at the bigger picture it’s not hard to see that technological advancements have affected photography drastically. Digital cameras have given people the chance to take and upload images to the Internet instantaneously. These days it’s easy to take some photos, build a website and call yourself a photographer.”

So where’s the resolution? Does the accessibility of photography make it easier to feign a career in the industry or, to put it another way, if one can afford professional gear, does one become a professional photographer? No, say many, for the tools don’t make the photographer. A good photographer needs ‘the eye,’ and that cannot be bought or sold.

Personally, I think the medium is evolving, just as all art forms have evolved and continue to do. If that weren’t the case, we’d still be painting stoic portraits of monarchs or eroticising reclining nudes. I think our online sharing habits have promoted a rebirth of photography as art. Sure, some would argue that this has diluted its quality, but the same can be said for every creative outlet. The internet provides a platform of expression for everyone, whether they’re good or not. This is something that shouldn’t be chastised, it should be celebrated. After all, the cream will always rise to the top and whether a traditionalist likes it or not, digital post production has the power to transform a moment in time into a work of art.

To quote Tolstoy, “Art is a human activity consisting in this, that one man consciously by means of certain signs, hands on to others feelings he has lived through, and that others are infected by those feelings and experiences them.”

So, tell us, do you think digital photography is disposable? Do you photograph with intent more with film versus digital?

Today's guest post is by Jerod Foster, an editorial and natural history photographer based in Lubbock, Texas. His book, Storytellers: A Photographer's Guide To Developing Themes and Creating Stories With Pictures, was published in 2011. Follow @jerodfoster on Twitter.

Many thanks to Seshu for providing me the opportunity to guest appear on such a resourceful blog. Once again, the ability to create positive relationships over an ever-growing online community of photographers astounds me.

Speaking of community, if you’re reading this post, there’s no doubt that a good many of you came here via a link posted on Twitter or Facebook, perhaps Google+, your own RSS feed, or a variety of other means of connecting you to, well, here. Word spreads fast in the photography world, especially when that world spans across a very diverse and prolific online community. Needless to say, the photography community, online or not, is large. Very large.

It’s so large and diverse that it’s often difficult to distinguish who we are at times. Just think about it for a moment. We’re so vast and varietal, and in some cases so niche, that we’ve become enclaves of particular areas of the entire art and craft of photography. At the same time, however, we know we all relate to each other on one level or another, but what?

A quandary? Perhaps. Maybe we can be a bit deductive in finding out just who we are as a community. Consider this an exercise in getting to the essence of photographers in general.

Let’s break some of the diversity down by types of photographers, starting with some of the more obvious. A lot of us are wedding, engagement, bridal, and family photographers, established in a particularly special and popular area of photography that have, if you think about it, one of the most important jobs in the world. Others of us are photojournalists, visualizing the life around us for a variety of outlets, including the tried and true newspaper industry, magazine publications, and a boatload of online resources for both traditional and new media content. Still, there are those of us that concentrate solely on the natural world, training our vision and gear on awe-inspiring landscapes and the wildlife that populate such environments. We can’t leave sports shooters of the list, either, since they carry quite a bit of the load for both personal and media audiences (globally, I might add).

Story is not something new, but it is indeed a constant. It’s what each and every one of us as a community (online or not) has in common.

Hold up, though. I’m creating a rather clear separation of the types of photographers out there (I also realize the listing is quite truncated). It’s also apparent among the community that not all of us are 100% one type or the other. Many of us that sling a camera over our shoulder do so with just as much commitment to shooting a family as we do the magazine story assignment we picked up last week. I know sports photographers that can shoot a heckuva wedding, and vice versa. Lest we forget, there are specializations upon specializations in the photography field as well, ranging from different styles of portraiture and cultural photography, to underwater shooting, science and medical image making, to fine art forms of the craft. Some of us are primarily focused on publishing in coffee table books and magazines, while most of us will never see the inside of what those that do call the land of the yellow border (although that shouldn’t stop one from trying).

Finally, but certainly not the least, there are those of us that do not necessarily aspire to be labeled a “type” of photographer, but instead are content and productively happy being generalists and avid shooters. This position is true for many, if not the most, of us, and it includes all levels of photographic achievement/aptitude, from the most basic hobbyist to the amateur wondering if she can earn some side money photographing her neighbors’ children, to the emerging professional right out of university.

So, if the photography community is so diverse, what keeps us together, stumbling upon (if you will) other parts of the industry, different shooters, and strange and interesting sources of visual inspiration? No matter what type of photography you lean toward, the thing that connects each and every one of us is the fact that we’re all telling stories with the images we produce. Story, for that matter, has been a part of what connects us all since the dawn of time! Story and storytelling is what and how we use the information we are continuously consuming to learn and interpret our world. Photography, in this sense, is one of the most important modes of telling story and has been since its commercial inception in the early 19th century.

I’m going to go out on a limb and say that storytelling is vital to being a photographer. In some ways, it’s our responsibility to tell stories with images. Not in a cliché way either—I believe that we photographers (no matter what level of professional or hobbyist achievement) are a very important part of what keeps this world in tune with itself. Whether you’re shooting a global humanitarian campaign, a national advertisement, or your child’s first birthday, you have something to pass along with your images, and it keeps informing those around you.

That being said, I also believe that in order to grow as a photographer, we have to tie quite a few things together—things that are discussed quite a bit by the online community I mentioned earlier. Gear, technique, technical aptitude, vision, visual language, style—all are used in order to increase how we see and create compelling images. In addition, and more importantly, each helps us tell stories (they can get in the way as well; a post for another time). Our job is to make sure we’re doing just that. We may improve as photographers, but in essence, we grow as storytellers.

At its core, photography is meant to tell story. At our core, we are storytellers. Whether you’re just starting out, or you have shot professionally for the past 30 years, whether you’re in the studio or on some exotic location, whether you’re shooting solo or as part of a budgeted production crew, story is the central element of the visuals you produce. Story is not something new, but it is indeed a constant. It’s what each and every one of us as a community (online or not) has in common.

We are, in essence, a community of visual storytellers.

This is a guest post by Stuart Sipahigil. He is an amateur photographer in the traditional sense of the word; that is, he does it for the love of the craft. His photographs have won awards, appeared in publications, and have made their way into homes and businesses around the country. Stuart also teaches workshops to help other amateur photographers find great photographs close to home. Stuart’s work can be found at TheLightWithout.com.

So, you're “just” an amateur photographer… but you've discovered that you have a love for making photographs and you seem to be pretty good at it. Your friends and family are telling you they love your photographs and several have said you are “good enough to be a professional.” Maybe you've entered a local photography contest or two, and you've done pretty well. Or perhaps you've even sold a few prints of your photographs to the local coffee shop or restaurant.

Now you're thinking to yourself, “maybe I could be a professional photographer,” and then, “how would I do that?” So you check out a couple of books about being a pro photographer — David duChemin's VisionMongers: Making a Life and a Living in Photography or Dane Sanders' Fast Track Photographer, for example — and discover that it's actually quite a bit of hard work. You already have a career right now and well, it's paying the bills and you're doing okay, even in this economy. Shifting gears to becoming a pro is a big change and would disrupt your life quite a bit. It might be doable, but it would be painful, and you're just not sure it would be worth it.

So now what do you do?

Traditionally, there were the only two paths available to you: turn pro, with all of the responsibilities that entails and the costs associated with it. Or remain an enthusiastic amateur, occasionally selling a print or two at your local art fair, or maybe shooting your cousin's wedding for a few hundred bucks (and thus, pissing off an entire group of professionals—but that's another story). However, I think there are several other choices you can make; several other paths you can trod that don't involve becoming a traditional “pro” to find satisfaction as a talented amateur photographer.

The Internet has changed everything. You have many more outlets for your work now than ever before. Traditionally, if you wanted to get your photographic work out into the public eye you had only a few choices; magazines, gallery showings, or stock photography, for example. Today, you can sign up for a blogging service and start your own photography blog, publishing your work to a worldwide audience in about five minutes. If you're a little more ambitious, you can self-publish your own “coffee table” book of your photographs using services like Blurb or Inkubook. Or publish a photography ebook, either on your own or through a publisher like Craft & Vision. All of these things were prohibitively expensive and perhaps even impossible to do on your own only five years ago.

There used to be an old saying, “Those who can, do. Those who can't, teach.” That's simply not true these days (and it never really was). Many professional photographers like Joe McNally, David duChemin, and Zack Arias — all terrific photographers — offer workshops and seminars about the vision, the craft, and the business of photography. But not everyone is ready for (or can afford) workshops with these big names.This can create an opportunity for you to step up and use your skills to help others that are as passionate about this craft as you are. Is there a local arts center in your town? This can be a great place to start and to hone your teaching skills. If you don't have that opportunity, why not just try leading a few photo walks, either on your own or in concert with Scott Kelby's Worldwide Photo Walk in July? Signing up to be a walk leader is easy and can get you started on the path to becoming a photographic instructor.

Are you good at talking about photographic tips and techniques? Do you think you can interview other photographers? Maybe you should start a photography podcast. In a few minutes, you can set one up in Apple's iTunes and publish it to a worldwide audience on a regular basis. The folks at Faded & Blurred have done just that, combining it with their own regular photo walks and a lively online community to create a terrific resource for passionate photographers.

If you are currently a professional photographer, you too can benefit from “going amateur.” I don't mean that you should give up your business and find something else to do, but to try to carve out a little time in your life to do some work for yourself. Personal projects are your connection back to why you started in the field to begin with: your love of photography, the feel of the camera in your hands, and the joy of seeing something that moved you appear on film or in the LCD. There is enormous value in removing the pressures of running a successful photography business and just do it for yourself.

Maybe there are other opportunities that you could use to expand your business (and reputation) as well. Matt Brandon, a professional travel and humanitarian photographer, publishes regular interviews with other pros like Ami Vitale, Gary S. Chapman, and Chris Orwig on his Depth of Field podcast. David duChemin created the Craft & Vision eBook publishing business by starting with a few of his own ideas about photography. Chase Jarvis has added The Best Camera, a best-selling book and phone app, as well as the Creative Live educational video series to his successful endeavors. Many other pros are adding to their repertoire of services by taking advantage of these new avenues.

And if your photography business isn't very successful, why not step back and take a fresh look? Is it just a production job for you now: prepare, shoot, post-process, deliver? Have you lost that love for the art that you used to make? Perhaps it's time to re-think photography as a professional career. That may seem a bit harsh, but I'm simply saying your photographic life might be more rewarding without the pressures of trying to make a living at it. Or perhaps you just need to shift gears and, like some of these other pros, add some new roles to your career, such as broadcaster or teacher. There may be opportunities available to you that you just haven't considered.

There are great rewards to becoming a professional photographer if you're willing and able to put in the time and effort it requires, but there is no shame in trying to be a great amateur photographer. Making money with photography doesn't always equate to making exceptional photography. If you love photography and want to do more than just make slideshows for your friends and family, there are more opportunities now than ever before. Overcome your doubt and hesitation, step out and see what you can accomplish as “just” an amateur.

Please support this site and buy Stuart's awesome e-book, Close To Home, through the Craft & Vision website. [affiliate link]

Undesired is a powerful multimedia documentary by Walter Astrada. It is brought to you by MediaStorm.