Re: [Leica] Definition of a Professional

[RBedw51767@aol.com]

Marc:

If you didn't have your legal practice to subsidize your photographic
interests would it change your opinion?    Would it make a difference if you
depended solely on photography for your livlihood?    How would you like it if
the guy at the Roanoke Weenie Stand decided he wanted to be a lawyer tomorrow
morning and began presenting himself as one?  I bet this would change your
opinion about it being "Much Ado About Nothing!    For the full time
professional photographer his image is everything and the protection of
his/her profession should be just as yours is to you!

Bob Bedwell

<<  use my law practice and book-writing to underwrite my professional
 shoots.  So be it:  I've never done a TRUE net analysis to see which brings
 in more, as I have other business interests, as well, from a minuscule
 stock portfolio (no, nary a share of Leica stock on MY books!) to buying
 and selling cameras.  I simply lump all my camera-related activities
 together and my accountant and the IRS seem happy.  
 
 I don't worry about it, but, then, I'm hardly anxious to join any
 Professional Photography Groups other than IlfoPro, to which I've belonged
 since close to its inception.  I use Leica, Rolleiflex, Hasselblad or,
 hell, even Prewar Contax or Ikoflex or Super-Ikonta or whatever moves my
 fancy.  I just go and do the job, do the darkroom work, and let it go at
 that.  My clients seem happy:  they pay me!
 
 Another factor is that I do the photography for my law cases.  On occasion
 -- some years, twice a month, others, once a year, I have to document a
 scarred face or accident scene or somesuch.  All of that counts, but I've
 never cranked that into figuring whether "half my income" comes from being
 a photographer.  (And I get legal business, in bulk, from the local
 photographic community -- does that count?)
 
 In other words, there ISN'T a definition which really works.  I am whatever
 suits me at the moment.  I was doing one of my jazz shoots last weekend,
 and in walks one of the local newspaper flacks, Canon EOS and flash and
 zooms galore, and pisses the band off with his "three rolls in three
 minutes" motor-drive mentality.  This guy makes less each year as a
 full-time newspaper photographer than I do in my part-time
 photographic-related activities, and knows a lot less than, I suspect, you
 guys do about customer satisfaction and posing and effective use of
 flashguns and so forth -- but, by the cited  rules of THE "pro club", I
 guess he IS a "pro" and I am not.
 
 Tough.  I am what I am, and those who feel otherwise can go stick it where
 the sun don't shine.  (For non-North Americans, that is a rude euphemism
 for an impossible anatomical feat.  Details on request by private E-mail!)
 
 Sheezh!  Shakespeare was right:  "Much Ado About Nothing"!
 
 Marc
 
  >>