29/01/2026
Ive heard these words twice this week and honestly the words have never sat right with me.... I really thought about it and why it bothers me to hear these words and this is my view on "oversaturated industry" tell me at the end after reading what's your views are.
The idea of “saturation” gets misunderstood, especially in creative industries like photography.
People don’t look at:
childcare centres and think “too many”
cafes on the same street and think “this shouldn’t exist”
hairdressers, builders, or schools and assume the market is broken.
Because we instinctively understand those as services built around human need. Photography sits in that same category, it just gets treated differently because it’s creative.
Photography exists because people:
Have children
Fall in love
Build families
Start businesses
Experience milestones
Want proof they were here on this earth.
Those things don’t stop happening just because there are “a lot” of photographers nearby.
What does multiple photographers in one area actually means:
different styles for different people
different price points
different personalities
different experiences
different values
One family wants posed and polished.
Another wants raw and documentary.
Another wants editorial, cinematic, earthy, loud, quiet, or nostalgic.
That’s not saturation, THATS CHOICE!
Oversaturation would imply:
demand has stopped, people no longer value imagery, memories no longer matter, And none of that is true.
What does this mean for photographers:
the bar rises.
people get more discerning.
photographers have to be clearer about who they’re for.
Just like cafes don’t all survive by serving the same coffee in the same way, photographers don’t survive by being interchangeable. They survive by being specific and true to them and their clients needs.
So my views, having multiple photographers in the same area doesn’t mean the industry is oversaturated.
It means the community is BIG enough, VARIED enough, and HUMAN enough to need more than one storyteller.
Honestly, That’s a healthy industry to be apart of. ✨️