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Earthrise by Apollo 8 Astronaut William Anders - sounds like he was advocating that sometimes all the training or equipment doesn't make a photograph good, but sometimes a subject can be just THAT inspiring. Credit: NASA

I think, in general, you are considered a professional photographer if your primary source of income comes from your photographic work. For example, if you are a wedding photographer by trade, your job is to photograph weddings. You are a "professional" wedding photographer. The same would be true if you were a sports photographer, and sold your work to ...

My tips: Don't assume you're good because friends and family say your are. Don't start with weddings. Wait until you've done a few simpler things first (christenings / babies etc). You may be a great photographer when snapping flowers but how are your people skills / planning skills etc.? Try to sell some stock photos or prints in a market. Go for it! Just ...

I am not a pro ... and I suspect I never will become one. The main reason is: I really enjoy taking photos ... but I don't enjoy HAVING to take photos. I learned this when I was taking photography classes at a local botanical garden. When I was just taking pictures of flowers, I loved it. But when I had to take pictures of flowers for the class, it ...

Ask your tax officials. They will have a very clear definition as to which category your activities and earnings belong. I have met amateurs that are some of the most accomplished photographers I know. I have met professionals that are inept. "Let me here call attention to one of the most universally popular mistakes that have to do with photography - ...

Don't do it. The photography business is insanely competitive and it's extremely difficult to make a living. The hours are very long and the pay is bad. Laurence Kim, a pro wedding photographer, on the necessary gear ($4k recommended minimum): http://laurencekimblog.com/index.php?link=140 Ken Rockwell on going pro: ...

Wow, are you hosed. You tell them the price before you start. Its too late now. Traditionally, wedding photographers made all their money off prints. If you give them soft copies, you cut yourself out of that profit stream. Bay Area, NYC, Chicago, etc. I wouldn't consider doing a shoot unless I got at least $100 per hour for my time. Plus I'd want more to ...

This is a pretty complicated question, with a number of answers. First of all, I think you should be at the point where you are already making money from hobby photography - either through small product shoots, architectural stuff from craigslist, shooting friends small weddings, etc. Second, if you already have a job, and you are looking to replace it, ...

You are right, a wedding is hard to do. But it is not impossible and we all have to start somewhere. One of the biggest challenges is going to be staying ahead of the program and getting in the right spot at the right time. Much of wedding photography is being prepared for the "next shot", getting yourself positioned and close enough to the action, and ...

Extremely important for professionals. Most magazines publish photographs, not excuses. So if your camera gets attacked by a bear, falls into a lake, gets stolen, you still have to be able to bring back photos. Many events are once in a lifetime or occur extremely infrequently, which gives you only one chance to capture them. For amateurs there is ...

I am somewhat surprised by all the answers that the OP is basically screwed. The lack of contract is a double edged sword, so the newlyweds have the same problems if they are not willing to pay a fair price for the pictures since they did not negotiate up front either. The OP may be able to walk away without giving them anything if they refuse to pay a ...

Do you have a business license? Do you market your work and solicit business? You're a pro. Do you sell an occasional image or print? Not a pro. I don't think it's about income; it's about intent. Are you putting time in on a regular basis on your photography business? Then, you're a pro. I just evaluated where I am in all of this and decided NOT to move ...

Here would be my topics How to Hold a Digital Camera How to buy the right equipment for you Composure - Some basic rules and how to break them Shutter/Aperture settings - How they affect your shot Depth of field Lighting and Exposure How to use flash What is ISO? How to pre-focus and use auto focus effectively An introduction to White Balance Lenses and ...

One approach would be to look at the top questions on this site, and to make sure those things are addressed in a helpful and organized way. You could even reuse the content from here, since all user contributions are licensed under the sharing-friendly Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license. Translation into local languages is very much a part of ...

Professional: Short answer: Are you mad ? !!!!!!! [ :-) ] Longer answer: For a professional lack of a backup body is ~= "death-deferred". You could consider that "being able to access an alternative acceptably quickly at an acceptable cost" is the equivalent to having a backup body, so if you were a studio only photographer and there was a 24/7/365 ...

Social is a big part of the picture. Forget about posing for a moment; there's only so much that can wrong there unless you're trying something very much out of the ordinary. What you may have failed to notice in all of that subtle direction you were following is that direction was only a small part of what was going on. You need to appear confident ...

So, looks like the photos had lights with different temperatures. Looks like a cool light source on the left and a warm light source on the right. A straightforward approach would be to take it into Lightroom and apply a gradient with a countering color to cool the colors down from the right or warm up the image from the left, so that you have an equalized ...

Next time I'd move the models away from the background a bit - there are some harsh shadows in a few shots. Put more light on the backgrounds so they're white. And make sure you illuminate the product as much as you do the models' faces. The faces are pretty well lit, but the hats/scarves are not. In post processing, I'd blow out the background to pure ...

I've done almost the exact same kind of gig, but for my cousin. Now, knowing what I know now, I'll not be doing wedding photography as a line of work, but... She was happy, I wasn't as much. Anyways, from my experience: You will need a longer lens. I went with two bodies (both Pentax K-5s) with a 17-50 f/2.8 and a 70-200 f/2.8 as the lenses. I used them ...

It's a regular feature in several magazines, and occasionally these things happen by chance. For example, I bumped into Will Cheung when I was shooting this -- I'd taken this other shot and Will followed my lead and featured his copy of the photo in Photography Monthly a couple of months later. I was torn between being proud that he'd taken inspiration from ...

Depending on what it is you shoot, you can just publish your photographs or offer them for for sale and see what happens. If your interest is fine art photography, that is easily accomplished - even at no cost to you and you wouldn't need to leave your main job either. (Artflakes is one option) If you want to become a photojournalist that obviously becomes ...

The professional case is fairly obvious, I would think. Photo shoots can be expensive and time consuming to set up. It could be limited location options, assistants, model availability, and more that is a factor here, but it boils down to the fact that a faulting camera with no back up means a lost shoot and that can be a lot of money. The other ...

If this eBook is targeted towards beginners, please do not make it too technical. I would make sure to cover: Brief History of Photography Introduce Different Genres of Photography (Include Visual Examples of Each) Tools of the Trade (Camera, Flash, Lens, Tripod, etc) Exposure Triangle (Aperture, Shutter & ISO) Composition Conceptual & Creative ...

The distinction depends on the context, how you use use the words 'professional' and 'amateur' Used as a noun or compound noun Professional means an activity that is one's profession, i.e. carried out for reward Amateur means an activity outside one's profession Since the words are nouns in this context they do not describe the degree of excellence. ...

We hired a family member who is trying to get his professional business off the ground. He charged $500 for the day, plus $250 for a photo CD including rights to copy/share/print. That was a steal; the next lowest bidder wanted $1000 for the day, required us to buy a precompiled album (included in that $1000 "sitting fee"), wanted an additional $200 for a ...

For reference I paid $1600 for around 50 photos in the cheapest book the photographer had to offer. We could select photos from 1000 for review, out of which a lot of them were duplicates, closed eyes, weird faces and pictures of trees, pots, and vases. He was only there for the ceremony, and 30min photo shoot with us afterwards, and my wife's getting ...

You may have encountered the greatest challenge in photography: asking for money after the job is done. I make it a point in my professional dealings to have the "money conversation" right up front, never later than the second conversation. Otherwise it's almost always a losing battle to get fair compensation. To answer your question directly I would ...

Professional get paid when they go to a shoot, and if the camera fails, that $1000 job would become a $0 job + one very pissed off client. So it is a MUST. For people not getting paid doing photography however, having a camera failure really doesn't have that big an impact. It really boils down to how important is the shoot. For example it is your sister's ...

I definitely think that the line between professional and amateur should be drawn according to money, and not skill, training, or artistic merit. How about this: you can consider yourself a professional when your photography earns you more money than you've spent on gear and other costs (ie: you're turning a profit)?