Professional?

What makes a professional photographer? Is it just getting paid for their work? Or is it a degree in photography? And what about experience?

These were all questions I’ve been pondering for years. Personally, I believe it’s a combination of many factors that make a professional photographer. But there’s one thing I expect from anyone who calls themselves a professional… and that is, despite things going horribly wrong, they can find a way to make things work. Professionals usually take precautions to avoid things going wrong in the first place, because they have a backup plan, and that backup plan has a backup plan, and so on. Sometimes, no matter how much you think you’re prepared, life just throws a spanner in the works, and well… you gotta just find a way to make the impossible possible.

This all brings me back to the first set of questions. I think a professional should be paid for their work, but if your client is going to pay you, then you need to make sure you can deliver. To say you can deliver, you need confidence (and I don’t mean bravado… I mean genuine confidence that you know you can meet your clients’ needs and hopefully exceed them). The catch here is, usually to get that confidence, you need experience, and unfortunately, most of the time, the work doesn’t pay well or even pays at all. Like most things in life, photography is a skill that needs to be nurtured. Usain Bolt doesn’t suddenly become the fastest man in the world; it takes practice, time, passion, and dedication for skills to become great.

I’ve always thought that “getting paid” shouldn’t be the end goal. It should be a result of what you wanted to achieve in the first place, which is to capture or create great images that evoke an emotional response from your client or audience. The thing is, 90% of the time, your clients won’t care what camera or lighting equipment you used because the images you produce are what really matter to them… unless your client is a camera manufacturer, in which case I would assume that your photography skills are pretty good and you would very likely have advice I can learn from.

What does being a professional mean to you?