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p.3 #17 · p.3 #17 · Has anyone considered moving from Sony to m43 gear | |
philip_pj wrote:
Yes, it's a luxury good issue for those for whom it is not.
We need an intermediate category for 'committed non-pro'; I hate the term 'hobbyist' because it implies dilettante, dabbler, dissipated and world weary; just a perpetual adolescent mucking around with photography. When I look over the images here, nothing could be further from the truth. The 4am rises, the long hauls over the mountains, the trips to wild and savage places.
It's hard work, it's expensive, it takes commitment..just like anything in the world worth doing, and somehow 'hobbyist' demeans the practitioners who go through the hardships and hard work for the love of it, for the love of the art of it. It's not like setting up a model railway and watching the little trains go round and round..toot toot....Show more →
I see the split more at Pro and non-Pro.
Interestingly, when I was in the non-Pro camp, I always kinda associated Pro with "better, committed, best output" and every other superlative one could think of. Pro was the sexy group.
Now that I've been in the Pro camp for so long, I totally see it differently. To me, I see the Pro camp more in terms of nuts-and-bolts, running a business, totally not-sexy, using old dilapidated gear longer, making kluges work, often deliver-the-shot-but-not-perfection-- literally the opposite of best, sexy, superlative. Pros may need to go out and come back on a timeframe; non-Pros can take years of early mornings and get that perfect, sexy, superlative shot. For the most part I would say that non-Pros cover a wider distribution, with a lot of really weak work-- but much of the best photography there is. Pros also cover a range, with plenty of shlock, but in general the lower boundary appears higher to me... but the top may not actually reach quite as high as that of the truly dedicated non-Pros who are really about perfection rather than delivering on a deadline/budget. And this goes for everything from PJs to those working 5-6-digit commercial campaigns. Early on I had a lot of visibility of such large campaigns... and the photography in many cases was extremely quotidian: Get a happy customer leaving a bank branch smiling; here's a couple walking into a new home; nice landscape with a car sitting in the foreground during sunset; extreme landscape with man jumping in air facing away from camera for million dollar tech campaign. All shots delivered; all.... meh.
So I think it's also a matter of perspective. And as a pro myself, I don't really the pro vs non-pro dichotomy as mapping to better vs mediocre. I mainly see it as the injection of the need to generate income. And the delivery on that need is probably 90% about running a business, balancing the books, making strategic decisions about clients/marketing, networking, person-to-person skills... and the rest is about being good enough with a camera that you keep getting hired. It's like any field: There are a few people pretty bad at the job, a bulk just kinda in the middle, and a few people who are incredibly good at what they do. Those real rockstars, the ones pulling down the big-big bucks... here's secret: they often aren't the one's who are incredibly good at photography. They tend to be the ones who are incredibly good at business (positioning, posing, networking, personal marketing, etc).
So I'm a bit disillusioned by the whole Pro vs non-Pro/Hobbyist/Amateur thing. Pro doesn't carry any cache for me anymore. More like: Working schlub. There's a lot of smoke and mirrors.
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