There are other occupations in the same situation - namely sunken pyramid (or iceberg) style endeavors - e.g. where just the top of the top is above water. For example - music, arts (all kinds), professional sports, etc. Engaging in any of those endeavors as a means to earn money is a bit like playing the lottery. The odds are stacked against you, overwhelmingly, but the promise of immeasurable sums of money and/or fame is enough to keep hordes interested. Photography is kind of like that - except worse: you don't get to be a rock star even if you are at the top.
This post is not meant to add to the growing number of lamentations. To the contrary. Something that is lost in all this is an assumption that photographers need to make money or somehow live off their skill, either by licensing images (end products) or just by selling off their time. To that I contend that if you want to be a photographer so you can have a job, then you have your priorities wrong. There are other ways of making money more easily. While making money and creating something good (by whatever definition of good) are often correlated, there is no causal connection between the two. Yes - having someone pay for your experimentation can lead to good things, and so can learning working discipline from having externally imposed constraints and deadlines. But there is no reason why self direction should not accomplish the same thing. There is also no reason why doing something completely unrelated to make money to support your photography isn't just as good or even better for the overall quality of your work as toiling for brides or magazine photo editors.
My contention is that the photographer's most important work today is the self directed project or the so called 'personal work', and all the work for hire (or work with the intention of getting paid for the eventual images) is ancillary to that. You don't shoot projects so that you can get paying jobs, you should shoot projects for the sake of it, and if paying jobs result from that, well - that's the cherry on top. If you want to escape the wretched feeling of being part of a declining industry, then stop trying to make money off your talents. Become amateur - in the original sense of the word. Philosophers and artist of the ancient Greece and Rome were doing it. If you can find a Maecena - even better, but don't work for the money, work for yourself. All the advantages of being part of an industry (peer review, consistent definition of quality, professional network) can be realized by interacting with the people in your position - true amateurs, that are united by a kindred aesthetic ideal.
Be a patrician - shun work, do your thing for the passion of it. But just as important, don't let it slide into a hobby - don't just do it for the pleasure of it. Get better, keep at it, work hard. Do it for the love of the art, not for the love of the money or for the love of your self being.
