My brother used to go to a photo studio run by a man and his two sons. Those people were real photographers who understood the finer points of photograph. How to take a nice picture, how to compose your shot, how to treat the light etc. That was the case with most of the photo studios at that time. It was about 15 - 20 years ago.

Today morning I went to Bob photo studio run by a guy who, I am sure, doesn't know a great deal about photography. I am sure he doesn't understood finer points of photography as my brother does and in all fairness. I am sure my brother is a better photographer even if he is an amateur.

So if he's not a good photographer, what's he doing running a studio? There is one reason for it—technology. Technology has enabled people to do things that were very difficult, if not impossible, earlier. This ease is for both, the people running studios and their customers.

Today anyone who has the required money can open a photo studio. They open a shop, buy the equipment and are ready to go and by default he becomes a “photographer”. He has a digital camera, a computer and a printer and he can take your photographs, print it out and you have “passport photo ready in one minute.”

Digital cameras can't be used in all places so he gets an SLR and just figures out to focus, (if the camera not an auto focus one) the aperture is set at “5.8” as has always doing flash photography. I am willing to bet substantial amount of money that most of these so called photographers don't even know if their camera has an exposure meter or not. He takes picture that are reasonably good and clear and the clients are happy, so you see how easy it's to be a photographer.

On the other hand you have the customers of that photographers. The number of people coming to get photographed has gone down but there is no shortage of people coming to him for other photographic services. Sales of photographic material like films and cameras, developing and printing of films, scanning and various other things. This, again, is happening because photography has been made relatively easy with pinhole/autofocus cameras where all you have to do is just aim and click.

This is not limited only on photography but cuts across almost all professions. Graphic design is no exception. Earlier there were very few people who would venture into graphic design and those who did, had a skill, creating a print is not what is used to be. All you need is a computer and some images. Any image editing tool will allow you to create your layout without having to think about font size in advance and pasting the text on the layout with your bare heads with a smelly solution, now all that is done for you. You just have to deliver the CD to the printer who'd take care of the rest.

Web designed has also gone very easy overtime. You just go shopping for various elements like the readymade logos, layouts in form of templates. Even code is available to you.

To make it even simpler, there are even sites who will give you space to host the site with all the support you need, templates for design and the easy tools to let you edit the site yourself.

In one way it again brings us back to the issue of skills v/s creativity. The need of skills has been eliminated or has been reduced but the need of creativity still exists. There will be demand for photographers who can do more than a “passport photo in 1 minute” there will be demand of designers who can offer more than the canned solutions available on the net and create an ad that is more than just a picture and copy thrown together.

Bottomline…Go figure it yourself.