I have been trying to hack my way into a post on digital cameras and photo software and what they do. A number of my friends have been photographers over the years, and all of the professional ones are astonishing in their depth and creativity. So my point is not going to be the one that these folks are going away.
Still, a major factor had always been ownership of the means of production. Matthew Brady was a photographer, presumably, in part, because he was the guy with the camera. In newspapers, photographers typically got an allowance for equipment, but the machines were (and are, typically), their own. Painters did the same thing, basically -- they owned the blue paint, or could contract to buy it, and the easel and the studio.
But then there was craft, too. Taking good pictures is not easy. (Somewhere in a landfill are roomfuls of glass plates Brady shattered in misery and frustration.) And software and hardware are swallowing increasingly large pieces of the craft. I can take competent pictures now I never could have taken before. Crisply focused flowers, mushrooms, birds and even snowflakes and raindrops. Fortuitous blurs. The light in the dust motes. Even people.
So, we are all photographers now. I am getting some decent pics. My friend, Yefim, is writhing about a bit trying to find his voice, which is a little abstract and a lot ambiguous. This is the best picture I have seen of his yet, atmospheric and bleak without being obvious, allegorical, or pedantic. No darkroom time means that he is finding this voice very inexpensively and very fast. No money spent on chemicals, no nights spent under red light. (No flirting between rivals and fellows with the simultaneous aromas of skin and of dissection, either.)
There is a whole world of imagery, now, separate from the professionals, separate from the artists, separate from the snapshots. It's a return of diarism and letter-writing with the image instead of ink.
This is great fun, after all.