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Archive 2009 · is popularity of dslr a bad things to pros?

  
 
globalkiwi
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p.8 #1 · is popularity of dslr a bad things to pros?


Dawei Ye wrote:
I disagree with you, the analogy is perfectly reasonable.

Your mindset is exactly the mindset that NathanLake was referring to, how the medical profession has ingrained into society a mindset that only members of the profession are qualified and capable of handling certain tasks. You say that medicine is a life and death situation and as such should only be handled by professionals. What about Farming? If all the farmers stopped producing food we'd all die. That's a life and death situation too. Should farming be restricted to professionals? Yes it should using your argument

Only a very minor percentage of
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Actually, I have no reverence for Doctors at all. My point was that incompetency in a medical professional can lead - directly & immediately - to death. That's not the case with photography. A poorly trained photographer yields a poor portfolio. Not a life or death issue IMHO. Not sure where farming the farming example fits into your argument as it seems to support mine. There are many forms of human activity necessary for our survival that are not "professionalized" - photography is not one of them. Your argument about medicine is only sustainable if you restrict it to trivial examples like wart removal. I specifically referred to surgery.

All this is tangential in any case. My original point was simply that the status of "professional photographer" doesn't necessarily correlate with ability. The images are produced by a professional aren't inherently any better than those produced by an amateur - in some cases they will be worse, in most they will cost more.

It interests me that so many in this thread seem to want to sanctify the status of the professional in photography while they denigrate professionalism in other fields.




Jun 13, 2009 at 10:56 AM
Dawei Ye
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p.8 #2 · is popularity of dslr a bad things to pros?


^No not at all, just trying to balance the scales a bit

For the record I'm in an unrelated field to both medicine and photography

aladyforty wrote:
I have been doing weddings for some time now, I am NOT a pro even though I'm making money out of photography.

So if you're not a professional photographer, are you an unprofessional photographer

Edited on Jun 13, 2009 at 11:02 AM · View previous versions



Jun 13, 2009 at 10:59 AM
n0b0
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p.8 #3 · is popularity of dslr a bad things to pros?


Dawei Ye wrote:
So if you're not a professional photographer, are you an unprofessional photographer


Depends on the context. A 'pro' photographer could means someone who earns a living out of photography or someone with an exceptional level of skill and talent. My guess is that s/he means the latter.



Jun 13, 2009 at 11:06 AM
kakomu
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p.8 #4 · is popularity of dslr a bad things to pros?


globalkiwi wrote:
All this is tangential in any case. My original point was simply that the status of "professional photographer" doesn't necessarily correlate with ability.


Professional anything doesn't necessarily correlate skill. Plenty of lawyers, accountants and doctors (the three jobs that require a professional degree in the US) that are pretty piss poor at their job. Plenty of professional athletes that suck.

I typically think of any person as a professional if they engage that work for pay or compensation. I would be a professional web designer if I charged any of my clients. I'm sort of a professional photographer because I take product photos and I can keep the product when I'm through.



Jun 13, 2009 at 11:17 AM
RDKirk
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p.8 #5 · is popularity of dslr a bad things to pros?


Or if you want to get a vaccination, you have to go to your Doctor. You can't just buy the vaccination yourself, but if you could, let's face it, it's not very difficult to give oneself an injection...drug addicts do it all the time.

I don't know about other places, but in the US, doctors rarely give injections. Nurses and others do that.

Plenty of professional athletes that suck.

I'd strongly disagree with that. There are doctors, accountants, and lawyers that do suck, but I'd argue that there isn't a single professional athlete who actually sucks at his game. He might not be the best of professionals, but when it comes to sucking at a sport, I certainly suck, but no profession athlete sucks.



Jun 13, 2009 at 12:35 PM
halie
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p.8 #6 · is popularity of dslr a bad things to pros?


Canon-mount SLRs, Canon-mount SLRs, Canon-mount SLRs. There, now continue on.


Jun 13, 2009 at 12:39 PM
dolina
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p.8 #7 · is popularity of dslr a bad things to pros?


More competition is good. It prevents people who make a living become sloppy.


Jun 13, 2009 at 01:01 PM
kakomu
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p.8 #8 · is popularity of dslr a bad things to pros?


RDKirk wrote:
I'd strongly disagree with that. There are doctors, accountants, and lawyers that do suck, but I'd argue that there isn't a single professional athlete who actually sucks at his game. He might not be the best of professionals, but when it comes to sucking at a sport, I certainly suck, but no profession athlete sucks.


It's in the same vein as lawyers, doctors and accountants that aren't good. They may have the skills to be in the field, but compared to everyone else in the field, they're crummy, which is why they're last string or barely used at all. You have to use relative quantifiers in order to describe people within a profession.



Jun 13, 2009 at 01:21 PM
dhphoto
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p.8 #9 · is popularity of dslr a bad things to pros?


Paolo Dolina wrote:
More competition is good. It prevents people who make a living become sloppy.


I haven't got sloppy. I give my clients the very best service I can, always have.

I'm just losing work to people who will work much much more cheaply, even though many of them don't really know what they're doing.

David



Jun 13, 2009 at 01:28 PM
kakomu
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p.8 #10 · is popularity of dslr a bad things to pros?


dhphoto wrote:
I haven't got sloppy. I give my clients the very best service I can, always have.

I'm just losing work to people who will work much much more cheaply, even though many of them don't really know what they're doing.

David


You're probably also discovering that some people attach a much lower value to photos than you thought or anticipated.



Jun 13, 2009 at 01:41 PM
RDKirk
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p.8 #11 · is popularity of dslr a bad things to pros?


It's in the same vein as lawyers, doctors and accountants that aren't good. They may have the skills to be in the field, but compared to everyone else in the field, they're crummy, which is why they're last string or barely used at all. You have to use relative quantifiers in order to describe people within a profession.

No, there are doctors, lawyers, and accountants who fail, fail, fail again, and never succeed. That's not just sucking in comparison, that is sucking absolutely.

Professional athletes don't get to suck because their effectiveness is utterly public, utterly obvious (no hearings, trials, testimonies, judgments are necessary) and there are no associations that protect them when they fail to play their sports well.



Jun 13, 2009 at 03:33 PM
Lance Couture
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p.8 #12 · is popularity of dslr a bad things to pros?


kakomu wrote:
You're probably also discovering that some people attach a much lower value to photos than you thought or anticipated.


This is a large part of the issue.



Jun 13, 2009 at 04:15 PM
teebat
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p.8 #13 · is popularity of dslr a bad things to pros?


I have seen the same trend where people who payed the new guy with camera or relative/friend etc come to us because they wanted better results. This has been happening with Wedding, High School Seniors, Prom's and even family portraits. In fact we had two schools this year who's students came to us for their Prom photos instead of going to the "company" who was contracted for the events. It was very cool seeing the mass of student coming in and out of our studio before going to their prom.

With Weddings it's a little different, many of those who have come to us were part of a Wedding where a low baller was hired, they saw how poor the work was and/or didn't like the attitude of the person taking the shots and so they came to use.

I should say however that not all of these guys are cheap, there are some with great selling skills that shoot horribly. There is one person in town who has all the bells and whistles, cool flash website, his own blog where he speak about himself in the second person. He call himself "On of the top photographers in Southern California". He gets people to pay around $5K for a Wedding, which I admire. However I have been contacted by a bridesmaid that was in a Wedding he shot last month, she had the password to her friends Wedding photos. They were poorly composed, and very under exposed. The photographer also yelled at the Wedding party because their joking around was preventing him from getting the bride and groom in a romantic mood so he could take the shots he needed to get.

Out of the 20 or so new photography businesses that has spung up in our area the last 5 years only 2 of them have lasted more than 2 years.

rocketpop wrote:
You know, it has pros and cons. We shoot way, WAY more now than we ever did and we sell much more per customer. Each year or so we get a couple of newbie photographers in town that practically give their services away, and they eat away at some of our market. They almost never stick around (and we frequently get customers who went, didn't like the results, and come to us--and I know the other established photographers have the same thing happen).Even though they never stick, there is always a new one, or ones, to take their place. That
...Show more



Jun 13, 2009 at 04:45 PM
Tony B
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p.8 #14 · is popularity of dslr a bad things to pros?


crockett wrote:
....................................

Whenever I see an amatuer loaded for bear (on equipment) or I hear how I lost to a job to an "Uncle Bob", I dont' sweat in the least. I know that in the long run they're most likely going to have to be a better business person than I am. I'm finding most aren't.


Wrong. They must be a better photographer. There are many amateur "photographers" with more business accumen than most photographers. How do you think they purchase the gear a lot of pro photographers only dream about?



Jun 13, 2009 at 06:01 PM
RDKirk
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p.8 #15 · is popularity of dslr a bad things to pros?


How do you think they purchase the gear a lot of pro photographers only dream about?

Their others jobs pay the household bills.



Jun 13, 2009 at 11:16 PM
aladyforty
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p.8 #16 · is popularity of dslr a bad things to pros?


Dawei Ye wrote:
^No not at all, just trying to balance the scales a bit

For the record I'm in an unrelated field to both medicine and photography

So if you're not a professional photographer, are you an unprofessional photographer

Ummm I try to be as professional as possible but I don't make my main living off photography and don't want to. I love it and I note that some people I know who are now "PRO" as in full time photographers don't even pull out a P/S for the fun stuff. Id rather earn a little on the side



Jun 13, 2009 at 11:45 PM
dhphoto
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p.8 #17 · is popularity of dslr a bad things to pros?


kakomu wrote:
You're probably also discovering that some people attach a much lower value to photos than you thought or anticipated.


After thirty years I have a good idea where I fit in the pecking order of professional photography, but if a veiled insult makes you feel better fine.



Jun 14, 2009 at 12:08 AM
paulhodson
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p.8 #18 · is popularity of dslr a bad things to pros?


RDKirk wrote:
Their others jobs pay the household bills.


I think he was probably suggesting that they may have business acumen - displayed by their success in their other jobs.



Jun 14, 2009 at 12:23 AM
nathanlake
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p.8 #19 · is popularity of dslr a bad things to pros?


The question is not "what is a professional", but "what is a profession"? This was a recurring topic of discussion throughout my time in nursing school and later med school.

By most definitions, photography does not qualify as a profession and therefore photographers are not true "professionals" beyond the fact that they make money.

There are some commonalities among the major definitions of "profession". A profession is one:

Requiring a generally accepted body of knowledge.
Requiring long and intense academic preparation.
Requiring independent and rigorous testing and demonstrating knowledge through certification.
Requiring continuing education for life.
Conforming to ethical standards with a mechanism for enforcement.

Does this sound like medicine to you? Does it sound like photography to you? Take a look at what the PPA offers and you will see that they are trying to meet some of the basic requirements, but with so few photographers belonging to PPA and even fewer being certified, photography falls short of being a profession in the strict sense of the work.

From this you can define "professional" as an individual working in a framework of a profession, with all the elements of a profession, and engaging in a principal calling or employment.



Jun 14, 2009 at 12:55 AM
globalkiwi
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p.8 #20 · is popularity of dslr a bad things to pros?


Nathan, I agree, the notion of a profession surely implies raising the bar beyond just the "makes money selling their photographs" criteria.


Jun 14, 2009 at 01:21 AM
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