Define: 'Professional'...

It's been a few weeks since my last post, and if anyone cared then I would probably apologise, but I don't really think that'll be necessary...

So, anyway, like I said in my last post, I recently did another shoot with a friend of mine, Luke, and this one was arguably even more of an eye-opener than the first. Now, I'm going to do things a little differently here: usually, when someone tells you a tale, at the end, you get the, "...and the moral of the story is..." kinda bit. Well I'm going to give you The Moral right out of the gate. Okay, so here it is, the moral of the story is, "Professionals get results every time." That's the 'moral' from this story, and it's now my definition of who can be deemed a 'Professional', and I think it applies to pretty-much any trade / job / profession / skill-set etc, etc, an oddly enough, it can also be applied to photography! Now there's handy....

The thing is, being a 'Professional' isn't about getting paid to do something, or about certain documents which apparent;y make it an objective fact that someone is good at something. Nope, sorry buddy, I really don't think it works like that. But similarly, there are people who may carry things out to a professional standard, but still shouldn't be considered "Professionals". Not unless they can produce results every time. Every single time.

You see, the reason you hire, employ or just generally trust someone who is a Professional, is because they can get the job done every time, without fail. A Professional takes luck out of the equation. Obviously, if a little luck comes their way, then yeah, that's great, but they don't need to depend on it, they can get results without resorting to being lucky. That's what a Professional has to do. I think a good example of this would be a surgeon. A professional surgeon has to get it right every time, you know? If circumstances beyond his control make the job more difficult, he can't just leave the body half-way through the operation and say, "Ah well, I had a little bad luck at the beginning,  and to be honest it all went a bit downhill from there, so fuck it, I'm off." Sorry pal, can't really do that. Similarly, you wouldn't trust heart-surgery to a weekend-enthusiast-hobby-surgeon - even if he had all the equipment under the sun. You pick the professional because you know that even if things go wrong, he will make it work-out in the end. He will get it done, he will finish the job. A Professional, will get results.

I, however, am not a professional.

My job was simple, shoot a couple of reportage / environmental portaits for a local newspaper. My aims were clear, my day, however, was long and arduous ha-ha! Well, it wasn't actually that bad really. It's just that it was all a bit new to me, as I hadn't really done anything quite like it before, and I did find it a little difficult at times. I do mostly studio or location work with models. I use artificial lighting, take my time, and construct each frame carefully. At the other end of the scale I also enjoy street photography. This, however, was sitting uncomfortably somewhere between the two. And just to make things a little more difficult, one of my subjects hated having his picture taken, and the forced grimace that spread over his face was somewhat akin to what I imagine a rapist to look like just as he, 'Get's down to the business'. Cheers Luke.

In the end, we got the images we needed, but it had taken hours, a timescale which would not be possible for a professional photographer. Hence my realisation, that what separates the photographic men-from-the-boys was the fact that a professional can get results on-demand, and not just chance-upon what he needs after getting lucky. Overall though, it was a good day, and an interesting learning experience, I had a bit of a laugh, and got the job done. Just.