Why it Pays to be a Pro

First of all, let me qualify this. I'm not a pro, and I don't play one on TV. I work in the Photography industry, and I'm pretty technically literate about the technology behind digital imaging. I stand in awe of photographers that can snap the "picture of the millenium."

That being said, I can take pictures better than your average snapshooter, and I get to play with nice toys.

Recently, I've heard a lot of pros complain that they are worried about the rash of well-equipped amatuer photographers that are flooding the photo market with cheap or free high-resolution images. With the advent of the World Wide Web, you have a market that now wants low-resolution images (Web sites rarely use pictures larger than about 500 pixels in width.) Pros are concerned that many people will eschew the expensive photographs they take, and will, instead, go for the cheap images taken by enthusiastic amatuers.

Time will tell whether or not this becomes a problem, but I am actually fairly positive about the modern photographic market. The Web has ushered in a need for low-resolution images, but it has also given us a brand new market for images. This was a market that did not exist ten years ago. It is also a market for low-resolution images, not low-quality images. In fact, things like composition and serendipity make even more of a difference with low-res images. A good photographer knows how to compose, frame and crop the image at the time it was taken. A well-composed image conveys a great deal of "punch." Smart people are always willing to go the extra dollar for that impact.

Most pros these days cut their teeth on film. This gives them an advantage that cannot be underestimated. They get a sense of how the image will turn out before they shoot. This is a HUGE deal. I have never been able to master that, myself. They can shoot quickly and accurately without having to stop and monkey with their camera. They can also maximize the image data. This is far more important for digital cameras than it was for film. The following Flash demo should help explain it a bit better: