As for the business side of photography, he notes that the ad industry is bigger than ever, with more magazines published than ever before. Last year, he says, commercial photographers in the US billed advertisers $2 billion, and that number is growing by 5% annually. “On paper,” Mariano says, “it should be easier now than it has ever been to start a career as a commercial photographer. Yet, it has become very hard to get work.” And the reason? Technology.

“Photography at the moment is a business under the influences of what economists call ‘disruptive technologies’, he says, the same way “the automobile proved to be a considerably disruptive technology for the horse drown carriage. The digital camera and the computer have made photography simpler and to some degree substituted experience. So, even though the demand for photography is larger than ever the aged marketing laws still apply and more supply than demand has brought the prices down and makes it harder to get work as well.”