The Online Photographer

Shades of Rob Galbraith and DPI.

Dave Etchells, the founder, publisher, and Editor-in-Chief of Imaging Resource—for the last two decades one of the largest and most conscientious of the traditional written-word photographic equipment testing and news websites—said yesterday in a long Facebook post that "the era of Imaging Resource is coming to an end."

The short summary of the reasons:

"The current market just can’t support the kind of deep testing IR has always done, nor anything close to the staff of employees and freelancers that we’ve carried";

"After 21+ years of 6.5 day workweeks, I have to step back and stop pedaling the bicycle."

...And what will become of the people?

"The IR writers and editors are available on the market. I’ve talked with DPR about taking on some of them as freelancers; I hope it works out."

"I’m seeing this as a chance to pursue intellectual property consulting (expert witness work for patent litigation). I’ve done a little bit of that in the past, and absolutely love it." (He adds that it pays well too.)

Is this decision final?

"There’s a slight chance that the brand itself could continue into the future, with just the two HQ guys William and Dave [I presume he means William Brawley and Dave Pardue —Ed.] doing all the review work themselves." But he adds, "I don’t know what probability to assign to that option."

Dave also mentions that he really wants to have a reason to continue traveling to Japan, and that he will probably continue his work on weather-resistance testing of cameras—which he says no one else is doing. He thinks it could end up making a nice retirement job.

Guerrilla marketing
A background reason for this is that traditional media, a category IR falls into, just isn't as important as it used to be for advertisers to sell stuff. The old model of conscientious experts conducting objective independent tests, whether in print or online, isn't considered as necessary as it once was assumed to be. Companies are supporting more of the short-lived, opinion-based, or tribal-affinity-based content that people like to consume these days. They've shifted more of their marketing budgets to social media influencers such as "brand ambassadors," who tend to be openly partisan, and who sometimes shade heavily into the sort of boosterism that used to be the province of hired PR corporations.

I certainly understand Dave not wanting to work "6.5 day workweeks." I didn't stop pedaling the bicycle, but I started coasting it a lot more about five years ago, after realizing that I had been putting in 70+ hour weeks for a number of years. I'd start working in my bathrobe at 6:00 a.m., and not get dressed until just before the UPS guy came at 3:00 or 4:00 so he wouldn't think I was some kind of bum! Often I'd find myself up and working at 11:00 p.m. or even 2:00 a.m. (If you work at home, it's true that you're always at home, but it's also true that you're always at work. Insomnia? Might as well work.) Saturday and Sunday had become just two more working days; I think one year I took a grand total of something like 17 days off—and on those days, mostly just worried about what might be happening to my traffic. It gets old after a while. I work no harder than most people now. I try to take Saturdays completely off, and that sort of works (not today). As you might have noticed, I ended up taking two weekdays off in each of the past two weeks, and it got a little too quiet around here. That never would have happened in 2013.

Ironically, though, TOP, which started in 2005, might survive because it's so small. I'd be gone by now but for the 746 lovely people who are keeping me afloat. (Bless you!) That wouldn't be nearly enough to support an enterprise as involved as Imaging Resource, but, along with the shrinking income from other sources, it's been enough of a leg up for one dude and two cool dogs in a little house in rural Upstate New York.

Thank goodness for small blessings...like being small.

Best wishes to Dave and Marti and the entire staff of IR. We will miss you.

I'll keep you posted.

Mike

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