Even during the last economic boom, times have been hard recently for professional photographers. The price of digital equipment might have fallen, cutting expenses, but with high-end cameras now within reach of amateurs the result has been an increase in the supply of photographers and of images too. At the same time, the Internet has created new distribution channels available to anyone with a memory card, and cut into the sales of print publications, a major revenue source for pros.
Magazines and newspapers have responded by hiring fewer photographers and even passing out video cameras to the photographers they do use. Media organizations as large as the BBC and The Economist have turned to Flickr as one source of free images.
