18th August, 2017
Folorunsho Oluwatayo, President Lagos State Photographers Association of Nigeria (LASPAN) on Friday said that world photography day is helping the practitioners to popularize the trade and making it relevant.
Oluwatayo in Lagos that as much as photography is vital in “our lives we have not been able to make our mark in Nigeria’’.
“We are in 11 states of the federation but we are still invisible, although, we send delegates to lecture their people and do what they can to promote photography in the country.
“We do tell them to focus on the youths and train them very well so that they can feed from what they do and not wait for the government job.
“We are very many and we keep growing, we have about 5,000 members nationally,’’ he said.
The President, however, noted that the social media, iPhone, handsets and others are helping out but it is not going to phase out the mainstream photography because it is still strong.
“There are things social media cannot do about photos but it is helping us create awareness. It helps to reach out to more people but the studio still serves.
“There is no way smart phones can take over because you need to enlarge photos, have photo books because it is not everyone that will go and see your photo on social media.
“The will see it in your house,’’ he said.
Gbolahan Adebayo, Public Relations Officer, (PRO) Professionals Photographers Association, Lagos, said that the practitioners need infrastructures and amenities to do their job well.
“They need to learn with modern equipment and good laboratories.
“We also want the public to appreciate what we do and recognize that it is a good job and that we document events and histories that they can make references to,’’ he said.
Adebayo said that they need government to address the issue of equipment importation at a reduced price because cameras are very exorbitant.
“People refuse to pay high when it comes to taking photograph, they will tell you it is just a photo, no it is not,’’ he said.
“We have cameras bought as high as N100,000 to N1 million plus, how do we recoup our money,’’ he said.