The New York Times today published an article about the rise of the amateur photographer over the professionally trained photographer. In short, the NYT reports that the phenomenon is due to a number of reasons including the decreasing price of digital photography, the downward spiral of the magazine/print industry, and the rise in stock agencies licensing amateur photos from Flickr and other similar sites for a lot less.

And because amateur’s aren’t necessarily doing their photo work for a living, the price they agree to sell/license their photos for is significantly less than a professional’s, which is great for magazines wanting to shave off some dollars from production, but terrible news for somebody who’s trying to do photography as their job.

As a professionally trained photographer, I think I fall into a small minority when I say that I welcome this sort of change. A lot of the creative work I’ve been seeing lately has been coming from people who have not been trained professionally in their craft and I think that allows for a kind of fresh and uninhibited perspective that professionally trained photographers don’t always have.