Interview with Alex Vita on Photography Trends

Website:
https://www.foregroundweb.com/

Country: Romania

Field: Web Design and SEO

Socials:
Instagram | LinkedIn

How is photography making the world a better place in 2024?

Photography will keep doing what it does best: documenting events and emotions.

Regardless of any other advancements in AI, regardless of any economic or political situations, good photography (and videography) will still be needed to capture the world around us, help with storytelling, and convey meaning.

Storytelling, in particular, is incredibly powerful. It can drive masses, it can change opinions, it can make an impact. And photography will always be an integral part of that.

What emerging photography trends do you foresee gaining popularity in 2024?

Environmental photography is on my watchlist for 2024 to help shed more light on local and worldwide climate issues. The bigger the human impact on nature becomes, the more environmental photography will be used as an educational and advocacy tool.

Otherwise, photojournalism and event photography will likely do fine because they should be less affected by AI, but I wouldn’t call them “emerging.”

If you could pick a photography mentor in 2024, who would you pick? Why?

I can’t give out a name, but I’d be looking for someone fairly young and well-versed in business aspects of photography, some sort of business coach.

The industry is becoming more about differentiating yourself, about taking hard positioning decisions, not just about lighting and composition.

The unavoidable question: How do you see the use of artificial intelligence or machine learning impacting photography in 2024?

I’m an optimist, but I fall into the “sooner than we think” camp when it comes to the upcoming AI disruption.

I recently spoke with a quite successful headshot photographer who told me a story of a client of his (a corporate manager looking for pro headshots) who basically took a few of their past headshots, dumped them into an AI tool, which generated five new awesome headshots.

The images were sharp, they captured the right facial expressions, and the lighting was good. These are just minor mistakes in the eye reflections (but it’s a matter of time before next-level AIs will also fix them).

Will the pro photographer be out of business soon?

We’ll see. With every current, there’s a counter-current.

What is your favorite photography-related book or resource that will continue to have a significant impact on your career in 2024? Why?

I will recommend a book on pricing (specifically about ditching hourly rates and adopting value-based pricing): “Hourly Billing is Nuts” by Jonathan Stark.

Many photography sub-markets are *so* saturated that clients often use price as their primary basis for decision-making. That’s when photographers can’t escape price comparisons, and they struggle.

The solution is to stand out from the pack, to be unique in some way. Adopting value-based pricing forces you to position your photography business so that it can command premium prices.

It takes a lot of work, and it’s difficult, but at least there’s a path and not just the hopeless financial desperation that some photographers experience.

What is your go-to method for overcoming creative block and finding inspiration in 2024?

Inspiration is easy to find online these days. No one struggles with a lack of sources of inspiration.

Getting “stuck,” on the other hand, is usually a mental or emotional block that requires:

– The courage to experiment with more courageous photo projects

– The confidence to go off the safe path

– The discipline and patience to keep trying new things even when you don’t feel like it.

I’m fond of this quote by William Faulkner: “I only write when I am inspired. Fortunately, I am inspired at 9 o’clock every morning.”

So, creative blocks are not about finding inspiration but about the practice of doing good work regularly.

If you could give one piece of advice to a beginner in photography, what would it be?

Success depends a lot on treating photography as a business and the serious positioning decisions that go along with it.

More specifically, beginner photographers need to understand, quite early, the difference between “niching” (focusing on a particular target audience) and “specializing” (becoming an expert at something) and how they can be combined.

Niching is usually the easiest career path for beginner photographers because it provides a clear path to follow (just choosing a specific type of client to work with) and offers feedback and possibilities for course-correcting along the way.

Think of your website as a multiplier of the quality of work you put out.

Alex Vita

NFT and photography? Any thoughts?

I see a future there. Photography as a digital collectible seems like a good fit to me. But it needs more time to go past the current “speculative” NFT market.

I like what Jan Erik Waider or Trey Ratcliff have been doing in this space, and I think it works well for highly-curated limited edition series or really creative projects.

Collecting beautiful art is here to stay and will move into the digital space (via NFTs). And I’m sure that fine-art photographers with huge audiences will take advantage of this trend.

What is your biggest strength and your biggest weakness as a photographer in 2024?

As a web designer for photographers, my superpower is “clarity” (from having worked exclusively with photographers for more than 15 years). I’ve learned to understand where photographers get stuck and how their online presence can drive results, and I’ve developed an eye for what makes or breaks a photography website.

For the sake of being vulnerable, my weakness is anxiety (with its various fears behind it), which is like a “ball and chain” slowing me down from putting my work out there more, from being more courageous on social media, from doing more live workshops or recording courses for photographers. It’s a personal thing, and I’m working through it really well in therapy.

What is the biggest challenge in your photography genre in 2024? What are the solutions?

Building photography websites is changing a lot for me. Platforms are becoming easier to use, page builders have become more powerful, and AI is bound to take over some of this work soon.

So, I’m intentionally moving into a more consultative role as time goes by. Instead of doing all the low-level technical groundwork of web design, I focus more on the high-level goal-oriented activities that can move the needle for photographers: the strategy, the insights, and the guidance.

It’s a challenge, and it’s fun.

What is the most important factor to consider when choosing a photography niche or specialization in 2024?

Here’s a simple process for figuring out your photography business positioning (as a combination of niching and specializing):

1. Do “internal” research to see the patterns: list out and rank all the past clients that you’ve enjoyed working with based on how much you enjoyed working with them, whether you’d like to do more of that type of project, how much you liked the actual people you interacted with, the amount of impact your work had for the client. You should start noticing some patterns emerging.

2. Do online research to validate and get new ideas: Just do a Google search for “[specialty] in [location]”. Take some time to look at the results and study your competition’s websites. You should end up knowing both the similarities and differences between your competition.

Is there anything else you would like to add or any final thoughts you would like to share about your artistic journey, inspirations, or the impact you hope to make through your photography?

Photographers should let go of the “build it, and they will come” mentality.

With millions of new websites online, just getting something up online does not guarantee that people will find you. It’s not enough.

To put it differently, think of your website as a multiplier of the quality of work you put out.

This ties into the mindset of thinking of your photography work as a business (and therefore considering it a continuous investment of your time and resources, not a one-time launch).

Build it, continue working hard, and then they will come.