professional
/prəˈfɛʃ(ə)n(ə)l/
adjective: professional
- relating to or belonging to a profession.
- engaged in a specified activity as one's main paid occupation rather than as an amateur.
By the simplest of definitions, being a professional in some field, is to get paid for doing said profession, i.e. I get paid for the picture I took, I am now a professional photographer. Then again, it’s not quite that simple is it. If a plastic surgeon does a lopsided boob job, you wouldn’t call him a professional would you now?
For me, being a professional is much more than getting paid to do something, it’s about mastering a skill, refining your talent, having knowledge in all aspects of said profession and being able to execute it to a level unparalleled by most. It takes years and years of practise and the learning never ends. One indicator for professionalism is having the ability to produce great results constantly, not just the one of hit, but the do it again and again, and even better. Another very good indicator of a master craftsman in any field is not only being able to do the job yourself superbly, but also to pass on your knowledge to someone else. Teaching someone requires even more skill than just doing it yourself, you will have to have both the technical and artistic knowledge and years of experience behind you.
I guess I might be a bit old school because I approach any profession from an artisanal point of view of being first an apprentice, then journeyman and maybe, just maybe some day a master craftsman. I have very high standards.
People have called me a professional photographer, but I always say I am not, far from it. Calling me a professional photographer is down right disrespectful for those who actually are professional photographers, one of the best in their field. While I’m technically getting money from doing it, that alone does not make me a professional. To the untrained eye, it might seem like I am a professional at photography because I take okay pictures and publish them on the daily.
These days basically anyone can buy a professional quality camera and go ham with it, shoot a few baby pics of your friend’s newborn, take graduation photos of your cousin and do a cocktail shoot for the local bars summer menu, getting a little pay check on each. Shoot everything at a wide aperture, get a lot of bokeh on the background and you’ll fool 99% on the general public. If I were to go to an opera, I’d say anyone who went up on the stage and looked the part, would be a professional opera singer, because I have no idea what it is supposed to sound like when someone is really good at it. I would be unable to differentiate someone who has been singing for a few years as a hobby, and Luciano Pavarotti. I am not trained even to be a consumer of said art, but that’s a topic for another day.
So what (I think) does it take to be a professional photographer?
Learning basics
Understanding the very basics of first, film photography, and then, digital. Knowing how the image is actually created, not just that I press a button, magical elves work inside the camera and then I get a picture, which is basically how much I know. I once build and shot an image with a shoebox camera, but that was on a summer camp 15 years ago, I remember nothing, and I’m sure who ever was teaching us, was not more than a mere apprentice herself.
Along with knowing the basics of how an image is developed, you will need to learn the basics of how aperture, shutter speed and ISO work. It’s the holy trinity of photography in my opinion, working on these three in relation to each other to get the right shot, technically. Then you can start learning about perspectives, golden ratio, rules, lots and lots of rules, so you can eventually break them. But first you will crawl, walk and then run. I like to do it the other way around though, because I’m hard headed.
Gear up
You will need a camera. What kind of camera? Analog or digital? Full frame, cropped or medium format? Mirrored or mirrorless? Smartphone? Okay not the last one, never the last one. So now you chose a camera, then you’ll need lenses for it. Back to doing research, and hopefully you already considered this aspect while you were choosing your camera. You might also need filters, backup battery, memory cards, lights, flashes, a backdrop, dark room, film, photography paper, a computer, post process software, storage for your images. Be prepared to spend some serious cash.
Study
You have the basic ability and gear to take a photograph, but to take a good photograph, you need to rehears a lot. Review your work, have others review it, learn what works, and what doesn’t, be critical. Along with shooting all the time, a very good tip I once got was to never look at bad photographs, only the good ones. Study the great masters, just like you would if you were wanting to be a painter.
You still with me? You wanna be a professional photographer? Do you have what it takes?
Journeyman stage
Now you get to go around, try different types of photography, start developing your style. Learn learn learn. Shoot more, every day. Do portraits, hunt wildlife with your camera, take product shots, shoot fashion, do a summer internship at a newspaper for documentary photography. Shoot natural light, shoot in studio. Use film, develop film, do digital, Photoshop. Practise practise practise, but practise will probably never make you perfect, because the more you know, the more you see flaws, you will always want to be better, to one up your own game, you will never be fully satisfied, such is the life of an artist. Fun times.
Choosing your specialty and artistic view
Now that you have been doing photography for a few years, you are probably starting to have a good grasp on what kind of photography you want to do and slowly developing your own style in it. I think most photographers are know for one type, like portraiture, but have a lot of overlap with different type of photographic endeavours.
Have your photographs viewed
When you get that shot, the shot you want to show to other people to view, you will need a way to display it. You need to transform the image from either film or a memory card, into a picture that can be looked at. There are different mediums on how you can show off your photography, depending on what you work on, it can be just on the internet, even Instagram, hanging up a print on a gallery wall or maybe you are producing your works into a book. Most probably you will be doing both digital and print.
Printing your photographs is something you will have to learn too, which is nothing like printing a word document on a plain white A4. If you shoot film and develop it, that is another business altogether and to me, it’s just magic. I can’t even write more about this because I know nothing.
With digital, you will have to know about pixels, file sizes, resizing and understanding what you need for different sites. For example, if you do Instagram, the file can be a lot smaller, and you can get away with a lot shittier photo, but if you want to try and sell your photograph on something like Shutterstock, your image needs to be a lot bigger and greater quality. Then there is the excruciating fact that different monitors display colours and light differently, have fun with that knowledge.
Stamina
As a last aspect to consider with being a professional photographer is having the both athletic and mental ability and stamina to work. Days will be long, nights sleepless, lots of walking, even more standing, crouching down, carrying your gear, cold weather, hot weather, shitty weather. Lots of waiting, hours of sitting beside the computer, staring at your photos and vampire like behaviour in a dark room with only a red light. Crippling debt and you might not ever make it.
All of the aspect above play together and can not exist one without the other. There is no straight line to being a master, a true professional, you will always be using different tools, depending on what kind of photography you are doing. No two photographers have the same path. If you want to be a true professional, you will always be learning more, developing, changing, upgrading your gear, or downgrading when you become a purist after all the digital photography.
I love taking photographs, but it’s no fun and games, not if you want to be good at it. I am forever learning, slowly developing, and maybe if you ask me in ten years, if I keep at it, I might even call myself a photographer.
Would you like to be a professional photographer? Or are you professional at something else?
Ps. I apologise for any technical or other errors, due to lack of knowledge (further proving my point) or my inability to write.
Pps. The photograph, stolen by me, is of me, taken by our dear friend 