A one-day initiative that took place around the United States yesterday shows the impact photographers can have when they team up to make a difference. It's called "10,000 Headshots," and it involved booking and shooting free headshots for 10,000 unemployed Americans across the country in a single day.
GoPro isn't the only company whose balance sheet has been hit hard by the coronavirus pandemic. VSCO—the startup behind the photo sharing app and community of the same name—announced that it was forced to let go of nearly one third of its entire workforce as the market environment changed "overnight."
As the coronavirus has spread throughout the U.S., it has left a wake of economic turmoil. As of Wednesday, April 9th, over 16 million Americans have filed for unemployment. Like many other freelancers, photographers have seen an abrupt drop in income. For many, late March brought about cancellations in droves over the course of about a week.
If you've been paying attention to the professional photography industry, you no doubt understand that times are tough and likely to continue getting tougher for newspaper photographers.
Spanish photographer Marc Vicens wanted to capture the stress and pain of the ongoing economic crisis, so he found a bunch of unemployed people and asked them to hang upside-down for right-side-up portraits. His goal of the series, titled "Hanging," was to creatively portray the feeling of anxiety that dominates the daily life of these individuals.
Is a college photography degree worth it? It depends on who you ask. There are plenty of successful photographers out there who have never set foot inside a university photography lecture, while others have done just as well after earning that diploma.