Everyone Can Be a Professional Photographer

Want to become a professional photographer? Easy, press the button. I'm not making it up. I couldn't make it up if I wanted. Preset Heavens wrote a couple of articles on how to become a photographer: Everyone Can Be A Pro. Preset Heaven is a website where you can download presets for Adobe's Lightroom. Since I am a Lightroom user, I look at some of these presets and see if they give me some idea.

Here's the exact quote of how to become a pro:

Step one to success - Digital cameras and big memory cards

Get a big memory card for your camera. In the old days you had to think carefully when to press the button or not. You had to make a choice if the motive in front of you was worthy enough to be put in an album or not. After all you just had 24 or 36 frames per film roll.

With a big memory card (4 GB or bigger) you can get wild and crazy and take 20 photos of the same motive in different angles and with different camera settings. The more you press the shutter button the bigger chance you get home with ONE (or more) great shot in your back pocket. That one is the ONE professional photographers get on the second or third shot, if they are lucky. The biggest difference between you and a professional photographer is the ability they have to "frame"; the photo in the mind before they take press the trigger. Don't think too much about this, you will learn by practice.

Obviously, he has no clue about what he's talking about! This guy subscribe to the George Eastman1 slogan of 1888: You press the button, we do the rest.

What makes a professional photographer?

A person who earns a living in a sport or other occupation frequently engaged in by amateurs: a golf professional...

— Dictionary

My definition of a professional photographer is a person that earns a living, an income from photography. This means that:

  1. You need to get clients.
  2. You need to invoice your clients.
  3. You need to get paid.
  4. You need to get new clients.
  5. You need to sell more and again to your existing clients.
  6. ...

Notice that so far, I haven't mentioned the fact that you will need to produce photos on demand and not when you feel like it. I also haven't talked about the quality of your photos, the delivery of your photos and/or prints.

 

1 The founder of Kodak ↑

Tags: Biz101 | Rants