As with all art forms, you generally have three levels of involvement. You have your "enthusiast" who has an appreciation and love for the medium, and even dabbles in it for fun, or as a hobby. You have your "amateur" who takes it a step further by becoming more involved in the inner workings of the medium, buying better "tools of the trade" as it were, reading up on how to be more proficient in their craft, and even going to the point of entering competitions or showcasing/selling their work to friends/family. The final level is that of "professional". Simple put, they do it for money. They've invested huge sums of their time and financial resources to fully learn their craft. They have the better equipment, knowledge and experience, and they live and breathe their medium, 24/7...it's what they do.
But I want you to think about those three levels in a different way when it comes to photography. This analogy will work for other art forms as well, but since this is a blog about photography, we'll stick to that. :)
Think of those three levels in terms of 1) create, 2) capture, and 3) finish. It's really as simple as that.
The enthusiast does one of those three things. If you said "capture", you get a gold star. They pick up their camera and just take the picture, without any thought about creating the image or finishing it. If you look on Facebook, about 90% of the images you'll see there (outside of professional pages) are those classic enthusiast pictures...you know what I'm talking about.
The amateur does two of those three things. Sometimes it's create and capture, and sometimes it's capture an finish. It's a step up from the enthusiast, and you can often tell the difference when you look at this kind of image because it looks like there's been some kind of thought to the picture...that's the "create" part coming into play. Perhaps it's an image that's been converted to black and white...that would be the "finish" part.
A professional does all three steps, to one degree or another. They create, capture, and finish their images, to give the greatest possible visual impact of the scene before them. The linked article goes into this in much greater depth, and I encourage you to read that article when you have the time.
The reason I bring all of this up is because the lines have been blurred quite a bit in the last few years as to what professional photography is anymore. Because of the advent of digital photography, social media, and the many photo sharing web sites, there are a lot more of the enthusiast type images bombarding us every day. I have to laugh because it used to be that years ago we'd all dread having to sit through some family member showing us pictures from their latest vacation or outing, yet how many of us look forward to doing just that on a daily basis by looking at all of the pictures that all of our friends post on their Facebook walls? The flip side of this is the watering down of quality that people expect when they view photographs. If all you see 90% of the time are those kind of pictures, it's what becomes to be expected, in many cases.
One of the latest trends in photography are enthusiasts and amateurs trying to enter the ranks of professionals, especially on the wedding side of our business, but even more so in other facets of portrait photography. Some will show up to your event, and just burn you a disc of raw images and hand them to you at the end of the night, without any finishing to them at all. The finishing part of the photography trinity is the part that they, sadly (or maybe happily?) leave out. In this fast paced and sound bite world that we live in, it's no wonder that the finishing process is often the most neglected. It takes time to finish an image...it takes a LOT of time, actually. A typical 10hour wedding day may take as much as 30-40 hours of total finishing time, from editing, cropping, color correcting, creating an album, and all the other finishing touches. Trust me, I would love to be able to photograph a session and be done with it in the same day, collect the paycheck, and then move on to the next gig...but that's not what a true professional photographer does.
How would you feel if you went to the store to buy the latest music CD from your favorite band, only to find out that what you purchased are their first demos? Or what if you bought a home and you found out that it only had the rough electrical and plumbing installed? Or if you bought a car, but when you went to pick it up all you had was the frame and four wheels? You'd be mad and upset and you'd probably feel cheated. Professional musicians, or home builders or car manufacturers would never do that...so the question is, then, why would you do the same with your memories? Why would you pay someone to only do 2/3rds of the work? Think about it.
To illustrate the point, here's an image that I took this past weekend. The first image is right out of the camera. The second image is what I saw before I snapped the shutter, and what I wanted the finished image to look like. Now go read that article, and it'll all make more sense to you! :)
http://www.creativepro.com/article/all-photos-are-manipulated
very interesting, as an amateur, who is learning everyday, I would never assume to be a professional but I do think that what I "see" in my mind and what I capture are the seeds. I work on making the photo bloom, if you will, by my finishing. It is nice when the end product is what I want. Either way, I love using my camera and being creative. And I love having a professional to learn from. And I dont want to be responsible for anyone's memories but mine. But I do like knowing that what I photograph is appreciated, so if you like what I share please tell me!
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