Sorry about that - pressed the worng button and sent an incmoplete message. To continue....I cannot say I am a professional photographer. But I am not an amateur or neophyte. I work hard at my images and do succeed more times than fail. People want what I do and I am happy to do the pictures. I need a new word to desctibe myself when asked - somewhere between professional and amateur. Any ideas for a dignified title? sSOme thing that will engender respect and understanding without involving commerce.

Uncle Dick

Photographer

Oh Dear Heavens. It looks like the first part of the post disappeared in to the aether and left the second part rather vague. This never happened when I wrote with a fountain pen....Briefly I mentioned that I finally realised that while I am a worker in the photo trade I am not a professional photographer - I do not earn my food, clothing, and shelter money from my images. But I do pursue the making of them assiduously. That's why I wanted a better qualifier than amateur. Of course if someone would offer me money for the pictures that would be a different matter....

Uncle Dick

If it's your profession: professional photographer
If you generate income from it (in more than an incidental way) but it isn't your main source of income: semi-professional (or semi-pro) photographer
If you only do it for the love of doing it: amateur photographer
If it's just a hobby: hobbyist photographer

Does it matter if you engender respect? Unless you're generating income from it, respect isn't required.

Hay Unk,
Really glad to see you here at APUG. We can always use your brand of humor and insight.
Best wishes

There's nothing wrong with the label of amateur. While it sometimes suggests a lack of proficiency, it also implies doing something for the love of it. In that sense, Schubert was an amateur composer. He couldn't make a decent living at it (or at anything else). Leonardo da Vinci might be considered an amateur painter and engineer. Michelangelo dabbled in so many endeavers that it's difficult to imagine him as a master of any. It's better to be a competant amateur than an inferior professional. It's the photographs that matter, not any labels applied to the photographer.

If you produce photos for other people, not only for yourself and your family: “professional” if you earn money, “artist” if you don’t.

Artisan?

Photographist

I like Suzanne's response - we're all photographers. Why does everything have to have a label?

Thomas Bertilsson - Photographer
Yep, that's me all right.

Film User? :D

- Thomas

There’s also another distinction to be made: are you working for pleasure (egocentric) or for passion (altruist)? This sets the difference between the “amateur” and the “artist”.

BTW, in my previous post, the money should be taken as a purpose, not as a result. An artist does not stop to be an artist when he starts to sell.

'tog

smudger

“professional” if you earn money, “artist” if you don’t.

Perhaps one of the funniest things I have read in a long time. This is going into the mental scrapbook for use at a later date! :D

Photographer (analogue) as opposed to fauxtographer (digital).

Murray

Dear Pete,

I do remember someone saying that art is what you can't sell and fine art is what no-one will buy....but I am benefitting greatly from the ideas that people put forward.

One reply asked if we needed respect. Possibly not, but I'm afraid I sometimes get the opposite and it rather hurts at the time. As with most occasions when one is put down, the appropriate snappy response comes to you much later ( in the bus on the way home....). " Oh you're a professional, are you? So they leave the money on the mantlepiece when they leave...?"

In my former job I WAS a professional - trained for 5 unpaid years*, licensed by the state annually, protected in my job by an act of parliament - and dreaded by most people. I no longer terrify the population but I am still searching for the right approach to other photographers, particularly the ones that boast of their acheivements. I don't begrudge them them their successes ( after all, I don't have to bear their failures ) but I would like some form of ...I guess it is artistic...parity.

Uncle Dick
* 5 1/2 actually. I resat exams.

One of our Moderators, Ole Tjugen from Norway, uses the very effective term Luddite Elitist which I think is quite nice.

Photographer has become a vague term in recent decades. It is a title many claim but it no longer describes what they do.

A famous Australian "photographer" eschews camera work and all the other stuff and just barks at the studio workers, models, lighting and sets guys, camera wranglers, and lab staff to hurry up and make her famous pictures so she can sign them.

A famous French "photographer" gains an international reputation by wearing out Leicas with thousands of exposures (expose, no develop, no fix) without ever making a lookable picture.

An obscure French lab worker makes thousands of the most famous and revered photo-journalist photographs in history. He does this in order to make visible the results of the blind camera clicking by the famous guy in the previous paragraph. The pictures are certainly photographs but is the lab guy who made them (expose, develop, fix) a photographer?

Maybe the way out is to claim a title that describes the last thing you do in the chain of production that results in a photograph. Recalling the above examples one could say "photographic director", "cameraman", "photograph maker".

We probably don't need a new word; just honest use of the words we already have. If we are too slack with the word "photographer" we could end up with a situation foreshadowed in a recent delightful thread on APUG: can a cat be a photographer?

Enthusiast, artisan, adventurer, craftsman.

I think that when people see your work they know what you are. Words are sometimes intended to confuse.

...“professional” if you earn money, “artist” if you don’t.

Thanks a lot pal. Now the wife's calling me a ph'artist.

D.

Photographic dilettante? :)

Matt

Photographic Artist and Printer. That reflects well what I do.

- Thomas

Photographer has become a vague term in recent decades. It is a title many claim but it no longer describes what they do.

A famous Australian "photographer" eschews camera work and all the other stuff and just barks at the studio workers, models, lighting and sets guys, camera wranglers, and lab staff to hurry up and make her famous pictures so she can sign them.

A famous French "photographer" gains an international reputation by wearing out Leicas with thousands of exposures (expose, no develop, no fix) without ever making a lookable picture.

An obscure French lab worker makes thousands of the most famous and revered photo-journalist photographs in history. He does this in order to make visible the results of the blind camera clicking by the famous guy in the previous paragraph. The pictures are certainly photographs but is the lab guy who made them (expose, develop, fix) a photographer?

Maybe the way out is to claim a title that describes the last thing you do in the chain of production that results in a photograph. Recalling the above examples one could say "photographic director", "cameraman", "photograph maker".

We probably don't need a new word; just honest use of the words we already have. If we are too slack with the word "photographer" we could end up with a situation foreshadowed in a recent delightful thread on APUG: can a cat be a photographer?

Sorry about that - pressed the worng button and sent an incmoplete message. To continue....I cannot say I am a professional photographer. But I am not an amateur or neophyte. I work hard at my images and do succeed more times than fail. People want what I do and I am happy to do the pictures. I need a new word to desctibe myself when asked - somewhere between professional and amateur. Any ideas for a dignified title? sSOme thing that will engender respect and understanding without involving commerce.

Uncle Dick

Photographer.

As you say, people want what you do,...which is photography. They want the photographs you make. They want photography from a photographer. The title is dignified enough and with the quality you offer with your work, the title 'photographer', as they see you, engenders respect and understanding.

If you can somehow include Ole's "Luddite Elitist" in there somewhere (as mentioned in Bruce Osgood's post).... :)

Marc

... If you can somehow include Ole's "Luddite Elitist" in there somewhere (as mentioned in Bruce Osgood's post).... :)


It's not "mine" - it's a quote from someone else who quoted someone else again from a heated debate on photo.net. :)

Perhaps we are all visionaries. As was mentioned before labels are superfluous.
I shot weddings as a side income for 20 years but do not consider myself a professional.

I'm a student of photography. Have been for 40+ years.