I was quoting the numbers from memory. Perhaps it did not include the specialists like medical and police photographers. I also think that the BJP excluded those who ran a photography business as part of another business. Like wedding cars and photography if the cars earnt more than the photography. I have a feeling they were looking at the photographers who would be directly affected by students leaving colleges.
My source for the claim that students were more successful than many other disciplines in the late sixties was some research done at that time which included both myself and my assistant. Don't forget that was before the days of media studies and surf studies. Most universities did very general courses like history, philosophy and so on. We now have the bizarre situation where in some years colleges have a zero figure for students working in photography.
Which brings me back to the digital aspect. I wonder how many photographers working well in a digital environment learnt their skills at college years ago. How many of the older generation who had a more basic grounding in theory are finding digital not too hard a conversion?
Bob
On Wednesday, August 20, 2003, at 05:01 pm, francis newman wrote:
Bob On Wednesday, August 20, 2003, at 03:59 PM, Bob Croxford wrote:
There is a suggestion that the number of UK photographers earning a living in the profession is fairly static at something under 6,000 which includes medical and other specialised fields. <snip>
Bob - to be honest it is impossible to put a figure on it. when I was at KJP (till 4 1/2 years ago, we used to reckon the figure was more like 10-12,000 (you'd be amazed just where there were people earning their living full time at photography) but even then that would only give on your (optimistic) basis a vacancy level of 600 a year. Btw - we viewed photo eduction as a significant market sector worthy of a dedicated sales specialist.
However, it was not always like this. In the late sixties photography students were in the highest category of further education to work in their chosen field.
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