Wow, 2013… where on earth are you racing off to?

Given that 2014 is already within spitting distance (though we’re still not talking about Christmas shopping), we figured it’d be a good time to take a look at what lies ahead for photography in the coming year.

It goes without saying that these are educated guesses at best, but either way it’s good fun to speculate and we’d be confident enough to put money on the following predictions coming to pass (probably.) As always, we’d love to hear from you, so do let us know your own predictions and thoughts in the comments below.

Greater Focus on Color Management

Last year, Bloomsberg reported on a well-publicized study which suggested that the average US household had as many as five internet-ready devices, and some had up to fifteen. Naturally not all of these will be considered to be image capturing devices, but whatever the number, it’s clear that the days of a family only owning one camera are long since gone.

It’s now not unusual for people to leave the house with a smart phone, tablet and a separate camera. A follow on from this is that amateur photographers are seeing their work on an increasing number of devices, and this has brought a more widespread focus to the importance of color management.

As a result, color management devices and software – once priced solely for the serious or working photographer – is now being sought after by… well, just about everyone. This growing demand from the bottom end of the market has already galvanized developers, and we expect the amount of options (and lower price points) to only increase in 2014.

iPhonography (and Androidography?)

We don’t want to linger too long on this point since the continued trend is an apparent one, but the rise of services like Instagram and the ability for anyone to shoot HD photos and footage on the fly has a large knock on effect (as we’ll discuss in the next few points).

The era of the smart phone hasn’t peaked yet, and nor is it likely to over the course of next year. Will a phone ever match a dedicated DSLR in terms of quality? Probably not, but technology only marches one way – onwards – and every year they become more advanced and, ultimately, more widely-owned.

Weirder And Wonderful(er)

The prolific nature of photography these days has been met with a lot of derision amongst professional photographers. Do people really need to take (multiple) photos of everything? Why is the worth of an image measured by how much it’s ‘shared’? Has the grand sum of technological advancement really culminated in Selfies at Funerals?

They’re all good questions, of course, and perhaps worthy of discussion in another post. But ultimately, there’s nothing anyone can do to change the way photography is moving into 2014, and there are a number of net benefits that many detractors usually gloss over.

Putting aside the fact that nobody should dictate to anyone else how they should enjoy or practice photography, there is some great work coming from the iPhonography camp.

13th Century Church, Margaret Island, Budapest (taken on an iPhone 5)

Again, this is of no surprise given that not only are smart phones getting better and better, but so is app technology – there are some genius apps which recreate tricky effects such as digital infrared, and the developer market is keen to push the limits of the medium in as many different directions as possible. In the hands of users, this tech is creating fascinating results and we’re looking forward to see how this snowballs going into next year.

In a nutshell, all this new blood is rejuvenating the industry. Open-endedness and increased accessibility to the craft has and will lead to more innovation, much as it has within the recently evolving music industry.

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