Hi. I’m a professional photographer. What’s an Aperture?

With photography becoming more and more popular within todays culture, every Joe blow and his dog is getting a DSLR and calling themselves a professional photographer because they can afford a fancy camera in which cases they barely know how to use.As this creates a frustrating strain within the photographic community as people who dont know how to create an effective image are taking newcoming photographers jobs, it brings the question to the table "what is considered a professional photograph". Is it an image which is taken by a fancy camera with average or fluke lighting? is it how well prepared you are set up? or is it simply nothing to do with cameras and how well you can photoshop your image.*Note following are my views and opinions, feel free to comment on your thoughts of the images and my opinions*

Taken with an expensive 5D, the so called professional photographer believes this to be proof of his professionalism. Although a nice photo none the less, it is far from professionalism with elements such as the background and the white line in the foreground.

Taken by Blair Bunting, famous for his use of lighting. This image has been very strongly controlled in all elements and taken by a very well known PROFESSIONAL photographer.

Taken by another claiming professional photographer with a flash camera with what would seem to be a simple point and shoot image. It has blatantly been heavily photoshoped to improve its attractibility, but the question is, has it worked? Has it turned this average everyday image into a professional image? Most importantly, has it turned the image into a professional quality standard image. I believe not, although its cool features may appeal to the average person as a ‘cool’ photo, I believe it is far from professional standards.

Taken by Dave Hill, this is a very fine example of a nice mixture of good lighting and heavily doses photoshop. Although I am sure Hill would’ve made sure his lighting was superb, this image still shows how much photoshop is relied upon within the industry used to heavily edit to create a “professional” image.

Saying doing photoshop will fix all image problems is very wrong with often the image ending up looking worse than its original self

Saying professionals using photoshop makes a brilliant image is also very far from the truth with many established professional photographers taking their post production to far. Using Dave Hills image as an example, I believe the extent of editing on this image is far to heavy giving it a feeling of tackiness and cheapness. Although it is very possible that his client asked for an image with that style it is still very Dave Hill style which suggests he decided to go as far with the editing.

So in conclusion, what makes a professional photographer? The answer is YOU, you must find a balance between controlling your image in production and editing your image in post production and obviously attempt to stray from taking bad images. You must be creative as there is no set equation for creating an effective image only effective factors. You must also watch the editing as far to many people edit their images far to heavily. Ill be watching you all (another fine Blair Bunting image).