Photographer Laurence Kim wrote an interesting article titled “The Photography Business and the American Dream” in which he takes a look at the economics of doing photography as a career, coming to the conclusion that it’s one of the worst things you can do from a wealth creation standpoint.

I actually can’t think of a worse business than photography. I honestly can’t. In fact, if I were teaching an entrepreneurship class at a business school this would make a great exercise: Have my class think of a business that builds zero equity, had zero scalability and zero barriers to entry. It would be interesting to see if my class could come up with professional wedding/portrait photography. Knowing what makes a bad business would be very helpful in designing a good business.

The bottom line is this: from a wealth-creation standpoint, photography is a lousy career. But you probably already know that.

On the flip side, if you’re toiling as a photographer, you’re likely driven by a love of photography, not a love for money. Kim has some helpful tips for how to do photography as a career while staying smart financially.

Image credit: Money by AMagill

When the iPad 2 was announced a couple months ago, it was called “the first ‘camera’ to have a sensor resolution lower than the display resolution.” Commenters were quick to point out that Apple never intended for the device to be used as a camera like the iPhone is, and therefore was probably able to keep costs down by limiting it to a 0.7 megapixel sensor. Now, with millions of the devices in consumers’ hands, Flickr’s camera statistics confirm what we suspected all along: no one uses the iPad 2 as a camera.
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If colleges offered camera equipment anatomy classes, this Leica lens cutaway might be one of the things you’d be examining in the lab. It’s a Leica Tri-Elmar-M 28-35-50mm sliced cleanly down the middle, revealing all the glass and pieces inside that go into making the lens.
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Frank Oscar Larson was an auditor living in Queens back in the 1950s who had a passion for street photography. Every weekend he would travel around the city armed with his Rolleiflex camera, photographing the things that caught his eye. After Larson died of a stroke at the age of 68 in 1964, his photographs quietly sat in a cardboard box for 45 years before finally being discovered by his son’s widow in 2009. They offer a beautiful look into what life in NYC was like half a century ago.
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Photography lens manufacturers use all sorts of abbreviations and acronyms to explain the features of their lenses. In an effort to educate use, the photography lens manufacturers really just confuse us. Hopefully you’ll understand a bit about the different lens feature abbreviations by reading this post.
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Photography studio StaudingerFranke created this mind-boggling image of a Polaroid OneStep Land Camera exploding into pieces. Reminds us of Todd McLellan and his exploding Pentax Spotmatic F photograph.

(via Flavorwire)

Image credit: Photograph by StaudingerFranke and used with permission

Here’s a old-fashioned wooden camera tape dispenser that would make a cute gift and addition to a photography-lover’s desk.

Quirky and cute, this handy-dandy desk accessory is shaped like a small camera and doles out all the sticky transparent film you need for piecing together pages of paper or posting reminder notes on your computer monitor. When the included roll runs out, simply detach the magnetic knob at the back and slide another one on the reel.

You can pick one up for price of $22 over on ModCloth. It’s a pretty simple design though, so you could also try making your own!

Caught On Camera Tape Dispenser (via KEH Camera Blog)

Everyone knows that mail carriers and dogs don’t mix very well. San Diego mailman Ryan Bradford decided to document his encounters with the canine adversaries along his route using a disposable ISO 400, 35mm camera purchased from Rite Aid. The delightful photo essay that resulted, titled “All the Dogs Want to Kill Me“, shows dogs glaring and barking at Bradford from the other side of fences, doors, and mail slots.
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The White House is ending its long-running practice of reenacting speeches for still photographs after the controversy was rekindled last week by President Obama’s Osama bin Laden speech.

After Obama’s live, late-evening address from the East Room of the White House on May 1, five photographers were ushered in to shoot pictures as the president stood at the podium and re-read a few lines of his speech – a practice that news organizations have protested for years.

Even though The Associated Press and other news outlets said in captions to the photos that they were taken after the president delivered his address, many people who saw them may have assumed they depicted the speech itself. That raised questions of whether news organizations were staging an event. [#]

Today a spokesperson for the President stated, “We have concluded that this arrangement is a bad idea,” and that the administration is working on a new method for photojournalists to make photographs of actual speeches.

White House Announces End To Re-Enactments For News Photographers (via Rob Galbraith)

The Canon EOS-0 is what you get at the Apocalypse when all the major camera, software, and operating system companies get together to unleash unspeakable evil into the world. It’s a camera with a little bit of everything: support for every major lens mount, a drive for various kinds of discs, Windows Vista as the operating system (shudder), Photoshop available on the giant widescreen LCD, etc… Pretty much the only thing you won’t find on this camera is a toaster.
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