Introduction

Let's take a moment and think about where we are now. Imagine all the pictures available today.
In the past, photography was very exclusive and only done by professionals on important occasions. But today in 2018, it is quite different and cameras and sensors are everywhere.
Taking pictures:
- Everybody has cameras, even 2 on the majority of the smartphones
- The gap between smartphones and SLR is shrinking very quickly.
Storing and sharing
- Storage is becoming a commodity. Providers are looking to provide added value in order to differentiate themselves.
- Sharing platforms are booming and the big names are out here to stay.

As a consequence, the Volume of pictures taken , stored and shared is just huge and growing fast.
What does it mean? Pictures are not rare anymore? Throuwable content …

Evolutions

Let's go through some recent evolutions that changed the photographic landscape.
1.- Selfies: boosted by the combination of the presence of the cameras on the smartphones and the development of the social media platform that allowed the content to be shared instantly.
2.- GoPro. Even if the main purpose is the action video, we see now that the scope is extending to still pictures and drones.
3.- Virtual Reality and 360 Shots (allowing some additional interaction)
4.- Drones, that are providing a new point of view that was only limited to governments or dedicated photographs

Stiff vs Video

Video and mobile video is clearly on the rise at a faster pace than still photography, but still image are still very present and complement the video.

Digital Assets

It is noted that the presence of a picture has a big impact on the adoption and the engagement of an article or image.

Tweets with images receive 150% more retweets than tweets without images.
Facebook posts with images see 2.3X more engagement than those without images.

"https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/visual-content-marketing-strategy"
--> so the need for quality content is there as a hard trend

Trends

Going Mobile

This is also a trend, not just for the devices (smartphones, gopros etc) but also the editing software and post processing. From very simple filters (early instalgrams) to very sophisticated post processing software already available on mobile devices in 2017.
Mobile devices have already the ability to capture RAW files , processes them and most likely sharing them
--> this will democratize even more the photography and allow quicker time from shot to publish than we have today.

Digital printing

The printing industry is far from dead. In fact digital printing is booming as the need for dedicated personalized packaging is huge. Just imagine that you can configure and personalize your bottle of water or a present, or your medicine. All these services that are linked to packing will inevitably include pictures and ideally quality pictures. Today the technology is there to transform the packing industry and the opportunity for quality content is there and will increase.

Much more coming up
Difficult to predict the future but it is definitively amazing.