Abundance or Scarcity

Had a long IM chat with the ever-popular Lindsay (smiling here) this afternoon regarding several weighty matters I won't go into here. They've been rehashed ad nauseum in various online forums, but the discussion was triggered by a remark another photographer made to her: people should get (paid) exactly what they are worth. Believe it or not, that is controversial in this little subset of society.

Another point that came up though that I thought might be worth considering further. Before the internet and the ubiquitous "online gallery" and photo blogs and such, I ventured to guess that it used to be that an amateur photographer would be lucky to have 50 different people ever see his portfolio. Maybe friends and family visiting his home would see a framed print or two on the wall, some might receive them as gifts. If he was ambitious, work might be shown at a local camera club meeting and be seen by a dozen or so members. If he was quite fortunate, there might be a local gallery show or contest and a few hundred people might see the photographer's two or three most outstanding pieces of work. Then there were the lucky few who would get work published someplace, but that was a long-shot at best, especially for the guy processing film and making prints in the lab in his basement or bathroom -- once or twice a month if he was lucky.

Contrast that with today. According to the counter, my OMP portfolio has been viewed over 22,000 times in seven months, and I have about 200 images there. Add a few thousand for my Model Mayhem, a few hundred for other online venues, and that's a pretty substantial number of people who have seen my photographs... roughly the circulation of some magazines even. And I'm small potatoes, basically. And I'm one of nearly 200,000 photographers on OMP, with thousands more spread out over other sites.

Add to that, I have my images on the portfolios of 2 or 3 dozen different models. For instance Amber (the smokin' model from the previous entry) has nearly 615,000 views of her OMP page -- many of those no doubt repeat visitors. But, it's feasible to think that as many as a million different people have seen one of my images, however briefly, on one of these sites.

It brings to mind the old notion that "more people will see a losing contestant on tonight's Jeopardy! than saw Sarah Bernhardt in her entire career." (Sarah Bernhardt being a famed stage actress before the days of TV and movie crossover.) Who knows? By that logic, it could be that more people have seen one of my images on their computer screen than have seen an actual Edward Weston print in the flesh. It also brings to mind the idea posited by Andy Warhol: "In the future, everybody will be famous for 15 minutes."

So, what's the effect of this abundance of exposure? Discuss...