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This article was originally published in the Photo Community News email newsletter.
As a photography educator, I rarely go a week without hearing from a camera club struggling to attract new and younger members. It doesn’t matter whether it’s a small amateur club that meets in a church basement or a professional organization with a board and a budget. The story is always the same. The roster keeps shrinking, and the average age keeps climbing. Almost nobody under 40 walks through the door.
The fact of the matter is that many clubs have disappeared since the pandemic in 2020, and more continue to pack it in or fall dormant every year as their members age out or pass away. I’ve heard club presidents describe it as watching the lights go out one room at a time.
If that were the whole story, this would be a short and depressing article. Fortunately, it is not the whole story. The more I dug into the actual research, the more convinced I became that camera clubs are not doomed. They are simply selling an experience that younger photographers are not buying, while sitting on exactly the product those photographers say they want. Stay with me here, because the evidence for that is stronger than you might think.
Photography Is Thriving. Let That Sink In.
Here’s the irony. While clubs are struggling, photography itself is booming. People take more photographs than at any point in human history, and the camera industry, after years of decline, is growing again.
According to shipment data from CIPA, the Camera & Imaging Products Association, 2025 marked the second consecutive year of growth in worldwide camera sales, which is the first back-to-back growth the industry has seen since 2007. Compact camera sales alone jumped 29.6 percent in a single year, a comeback that industry coverage consistently credits to younger buyers. Gen Z photographers chasing the retro look and building creative careers are buying actual cameras instead of settling for their phones.
The passion runs deeper than sales figures. When CIPA surveyed camera users in Japan, 21.3 percent of interchangeable lens camera owners said photography is a hobby that “gives my life meaning.” Among smartphone-only shooters, that number was just 4.5 percent. The same survey found that the desire to get out and take photographs roared back after the pandemic, and it returned strongest among young people. Thirty-nine percent of teens and 36 percent of respondents in their twenties said their motivation to take photographs had grown stronger, roughly double the rate of the overall population.
In other words, the passion is there, and it skews young. There is no shortage of photographers. The hard part is convincing them that a camera club is where they belong.
This Is Not Just a Camera Club Problem
Before anyone starts blaming their program chair, understand that what’s happening to camera clubs is happening to nearly every membership organization in the country.
Rotary International’s membership in North America has fallen from more than 400,000 in the mid-1990s to roughly 330,000, and only about 10 percent of members are under 40. The Lions, Kiwanis, Jaycees, and Elks are all fighting the same battle. These are organizations that were built and grown by a generation that joined things, and that generation is aging out faster than it is being replaced.
Why does that matter to you? Because it means your club isn’t uniquely broken, and your leadership isn’t uniquely failing. You are caught in a demographic and cultural shift that is bigger than photography. That should take some of the sting out of it. It should also stop clubs from wasting energy on guilt and redirect that energy toward the part of the problem they can actually fix.
The Myth About Millennials and Gen Z
Here’s the sentence I hear at almost every club I visit: “Young people just don’t join things anymore.”
The reality is that the research says otherwise. The Membership Marketing Benchmarking Report from Marketing General Incorporated, which surveys hundreds of associations every year, found that the top reasons people join a membership organization are networking with others in their field (67 percent) and continuing education (42 percent). Read those two reasons again. Connection and learning. That is a camera club’s entire reason for existing.
It gets better. Millennials now make up 25 percent of association memberships, up from 21 percent in 2020, and Gen Z accounts for another 11 percent and climbing. Young professional programs are among the fastest-growing offerings reported by associations.
Now here’s the number that should sting a little: 47 percent of associations admit they have not modified their recruitment or engagement strategies for different generations. Nearly half of these organizations are running the same playbook they ran twenty years ago and wondering why it isn’t working.
Younger photographers are not rejecting camera clubs. They are rejecting camera clubs that no longer reflect how they learn and connect. There’s a big difference between those two problems, because the first one is out of your hands and the second one is completely fixable.
What Younger Photographers Keep Telling Us
I speak with camera clubs regularly, and I spend more time than I probably should reading what photographers under 40 say in online discussions about their local clubs. The themes are remarkably consistent.
They want experiences. Younger photographers crave photo walks, hands-on shooting nights, real mentorship, and honest critiques that help them improve. They also want flexibility. Hybrid meetings and events that can be attended without committing every Tuesday night for the rest of their lives are much more attractive than a weekly or monthly schedule that is a be there or miss it all proposition.
They want to feel welcomed by an actual community rather than inspected by a committee.
What drives them away is endless competitions where the same five members win every ribbon. Meetings that consist of sitting in the dark watching someone else’s slideshow. Websites that look like they were last updated when flip phones were cool. Cliques. And the phrase that should be banned from every club constitution: “because we’ve always done it this way.”
Here’s the part that should make every club officer optimistic. Many of these younger photographers describe walking into a club where the average member was decades older, and they still wanted to join. The age gap mattered far less than what happened at the meetings. When the programming gave them a reason to come back, they came back.
Seven Changes To Make Your Club Relevant Again
Every club is different, and I’m not saying that this one list guarantees growth. But if your club is serious about surviving the next decade, this is where I would start.
- Put cameras back in people’s hands. A club that only talks about photography is missing the very thing that makes photography fun. Arrange photo walks, shooting nights, lighting demos where members actually touch the equipment, and themed challenges that get people out the door with a camera in their hands.
- Rethink the competition obsession. I have said for years that photography is NOT a competition; it is a passion to be shared. Competitions have their place, but when they become the centerpiece of every meeting, newcomers quickly learn that their work exists to be scored rather than developed. Replace half of your competition nights with constructive critique sessions focused on growth, and watch what happens to the mood in the room. Just make sure that the older members aren’t the ones doing all the critiquing. Sometimes the best critique consists of nothing more than questions.
- Build mentorship into the club’s DNA. Your most experienced members are your greatest asset, and most of them would love to share what they know. Pair them with newer members deliberately. A 70-year-old retired portrait shooter and a 26-year-old learning off-camera flash have far more to offer each other than either one expects. Put some effort into training older members how to mentor. Mentoring is not about judging or telling somebody the rules.
- Fix your web presence. For anyone under 40, your website and social media ARE your front door. If the site is outdated, they assume the club is too, and they never show up to find out otherwise. This is one of the easiest wins available because I promise you have a member or a potential member who would happily take this on.
- Go hybrid and stay flexible. Younger members are juggling careers and kids. I recommend recording the in-person presentations and offering a virtual attendance option for your meetings. Drop the expectation of perfect attendance in favor of a member who shows up when they are able and brings energy.
- Retire “we’ve always done it this way.” Audit every tradition your club has and ask one question: does this still serve the members we want to attract? Keep the ones that still work and let the rest go. A tradition that drives away the next generation of members has outlived its usefulness, no matter how fondly the founding members remember it.
- Give newcomers something to own. People will commit to things that they help build. Offer new members a real role early on, such as running the club’s social media or organizing the next photo walk. Members who are empowered and feel like they have an impact on the club will be sure to renew in year two.
The Good News Hiding in the Bad News
Camera clubs don’t have a membership problem. They have a relevance problem. And I sincerely believe that’s good news, because relevance is fixable.
We can’t change demographics. We can absolutely change what happens at our meetings and how it feels to walk into the room as a stranger. The research shows that Millennials and Gen Z are joining organizations that offer connection and learning, and they are picking up cameras in numbers the industry hasn’t seen in nearly two decades. They are looking for exactly what a great camera club provides. The clubs willing to do the work will be the places where the next generation of photographers chooses to belong.
Now go pick up that camera and shoot something! Because – “Your BEST shot is your NEXT shot!” — Joe Edelman
