After spending a day at Photoplus today, one aspect became really obvious. There were more internet businesses for amateurs and semi pros then I have ever seen. The web 2.0 bubble has definitely reached the traditional photo industry and one can see numerous web based solution for everything photographic. It was interesting to see, besides the traditional giants booth, like Canon, Nikon, and other Fuji or Olympus, a myriad of do it yourself, on line, community based solution for the wealthy amateur. And, a bit like the lotions that will make you a slimmer person or make your hair grow, these websites will enhance your photography to depths and lengths you had never dreamed about.

For just a small monthly fee.[1]

Of different size and with this feel of “we are here to stay”, these stands will offer you anything from do it yourself self-published photo books that, if you listen to their sales pitch, will sell more than Annie Leibovitch ever sold, to others that will make you a seasoned pro, selling more images than Getty has in the last 10 years. So once you buy all the gear, then all the accessories, you are teased by these businesses that promise to build you a career and make you extremely wealthy with what you thought, only just about an hour ago, was a only a week-end hobby.

While Adobe or Apple have magnificent stands with pseudo preachers screaming into wireless microphones in front of a wide-eyed audience on how to turn an ordinary image into a work of pure biblical proportion, an army of recently VC-ed funded start up will grab your emerging hopes to stuff them in a community-based, crowdsource-powered “shlingalabada”.

Rows and rows of false promises with shiny teeth hiding a sharks’ appetite. A little Las Vegas strip full of a salespeople who practically beg you to join them in their fruitless gamble, in the desperate hope that you will give legitimacy to their underlying lies and insecurities.

The most interesting part is that, with purpose or not, the layout of the huge Javitz center is set up as a warning: as you enter, you have from left to right and wall to wall about three of four rows of the companies that make the foundation of this business. The giants: Nikon, Kodak, Adobe, Lexar, etc. As you venture deeper inside, you then hit the accessories guys, long time accepted parasites of the latter: lens companies, bags, lighting, etc. and then, once you escape the peddlers of tangible product, all you seem to see is computer screens. The fabulous wonderland of the virtual world. Online classes, online models, online storage, online archive, online this, online that. Some very legitimate, most, however, probably never to be seen again.

During the first dot com, the amateur world was not digital yet, so it was speared. This time, the market is perfectly rip. In a very compelling way, it is a perfect showcase of the current photo universe. What is the most troublesome is that none of the microstock where present. Why ? A fear of putting a face on the scam ? After all, Mr Corbis and Mr Istock/Getty, Dreamstime, Fotolia and Shutterstock, what better place to meet and recruit more contributors ? And when you think about it, where are the traditional agencies. After all, Photoshelter, DigitalRaiload and IPNstock are there recruiting photographers, why not them. Or is the Photoplus crowd not good enough to be accepted in their closed membership club ? One reason the traditional agencies have taken a beating from microstock is that they have snobily ignored a large part of the shooter community and yet they persist to behave like tightly restricted, invitation-only clubs.

One can see the circus of the double digit, multimillionaire VC funded carpet seller of web 2.0, live at Photoplus 2007. Two days left.