The porn industry is big business. It has larger revenues than Microsoft, Google, Amazon, eBay, Yahoo, Apple and Netflix combined and achieved $97.06bn worldwide in 2006, according to market research company TopTenReviews. There are 4.2 million pornographic websites, 12% of the total number of sites online.

So what, unless you're a fan? Quite a lot, for any working photographer. The porn industry has lead the way in new media technology, and the shift it's experienced from print to online is now kicking in everywhere else. Worryingly for photographers, video has also comprehensively taken over the porn industry - in 1988, US companies (which have by far the biggest share of the market) released 1300 hardcore video titles; in 2005 they released 13,588. Also worrying for professionals is the rise of amateurs - as Dian Hanson, queen of porn, puts it this week (Interview, p28-31), amateur footage is universally popular but it can't be used commercially. In fact it just undermines professionals. 'Now, as in the music industry, photographers are expected to do interesting work for free,' she says. 'Which of course doesn't really happen.'

It makes for gloomy reading, and the future looks little better. With 3D football matches and Oscar-nominated films already appearing you can be sure that 3D porn and 3D everything else, will follow soon. But if you're willing to be flexible, it could be an opportunity. A few magazine publishers are combining high-quality print with 3D and video footage for augmented reality specials, and I predict many other publishers, in both porn and non-porn markets, will find it hard to resist. If you're into multimedia, you could be in for an interesting ride.

Diane Smyth, Deputy editor.

The British Journal of Photography

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Comments (2)

• |2010-10-10 01:43:53 Anonymous  - porn - garbage
  porn is garbage - it is offending women as objects for creating pleasure for men. it does not matter that photographer is artist or not. either way, porn (men or women) is degrading human race. this species has a great potential. by this act of idiocy, these ignorant reduce the human values to objects of creating endorphin in the brain. to have sex you do not need a human body, if you are a pig, a dog, a mosquito, you can do that and have the same pleasure. pre4 programmed to your genes. no offense to animals. they have limited iq. but humans acting like them reduce themselves to lower grade, lower iq, lower value. sex is ok but porn is devaluing a spaceship to a bicycle. ignorant does not know what can be done in a human body. they will learn in 20,000 years repeated misery. no hurry.
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• |2010-06-16 18:20:43 Sergio Beltrán
  It is interesting to know that pornography has become such a profitable industry, offering lots of areas to be explored by photographers.
  
  There is, however, the problem of the not so serious photographers, who use internet to upload material which lacks the necessary quality. I think it is then when pornography can be considered as garbage.
  Sergio Beltrán
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