^{Photo by Ben Gallagher via Flickr}

I was recent asked an interesting question by a young photographer aspiring to turn professional: “what’s the difference between a pro and an advanced amateur?”

It’s an interesting question because I have done both: been a pro shooting on assignments for clients, and also someone who takes photos for fun. There’s no succinct, simple answer, instead, a lot of factors come into play.

Consistency

First of all, and possibly the most important difference between an amateur and a professional photographer is that a professional is consistent: they produce quality output almost every single time they get behind the viewfinder of their camera.

A professional photographer get the shots the client is looking for 99% of the time. Often times, those requirements are a bit nebulous, incomplete or even mostly impossible. It doesn’t matter, they still need to produce high-quality work. Communication and an open mind is key to understanding client needs and a smart pro leaves as little to guesswork as possible.

Bad work means unhappy clients, unhappy clients often don’t pay, and they certainly don’t recommend the photographer to friends or colleagues. That photographer probably won’t be in business for a long time. In other words, they won’t be a professional photographer.

Craft

Pro photographers are made, not born. They might have the greatest eye in the world, but they also have to have “craft” to execute what they envision. Craft is a good working knowledge of the technical aspects of photography. In a way, it’s almost like learning vocabulary, grammar and spelling if you aspire to be a professional writer. To get that craft, pros master exposure, depth-of-field, focus, lighting, color theory and so on and they are usually experts on the subject.

Professional photographers also know how to set up their cameras and other gear to get exactly the shot that they are looking for — they either have experience shooting the scenario they are currently working on, and know what lens, shutter speed and aperture works best, or they can make an educated guess that will get them in the ballpark.

These days, “craft” incorporates more than skills behind a camera. It also means having skills in post-processing shots taken in the field or in the studio

Example: The Sunny 16 Rule.

Knowing the Sunny 16 Rule is a great way to take photographs outdoors with no metering. Coupled with smart bracketing, it’s nearly a guarantee to get a properly exposed photo without any automation.

That makes this formula a great rule to know, because in some situations metering inside the camera can produce some wonky settings that are wrong for the shot the photographer is trying to achieve. Pros know this and they override the automation and shoot what they know works.

If you want to be a pro, learn the basics of photography, learn your camera backwards and forwards, learn how to use it effectively in different (and often changing!) conditions. There’s a wealth of online information about that, and entire programs at some universities to completely master the subject. Not all pros have a photography or a fine arts degree, but you can be assured that almost all of them have a great deal of knowledge about what works, what doesn’t and why that’s the case.

Learn at least the basics of artistic value and apply them. Pros know that.

Learn how to evaluate to dispassionately look at the final photo and try again if you believe can improve upon that.

Nothing takes the place of doing, but knowing what you are doing and why is a key to success.

Creativity

I heard of one where the photographer who was asked to get fashion shots of a model in formal wear but standing in the Trevi Fountain in Rome. It’s prohibited to enter the fountain, with a minimum of a €250 fine plus getting shut down outright. That and the Trevi Fountain is an indredibly busy place with hundreds of tourists crowding around at any given time. Those are hardly ideal conditions.

So how did the photographer make her client happy to write a check for her work? She and her team did get the shot the client wanted. It was made through a combination of studio techniques involving chroma keying, multiple composite shots of the fountain where the end product made it look devoid of other people using Adobe Photoshop. The model was shot standing in a small pool of water rigged up in a studio that was lit to mimic the lighting in the background composite shot in the background. This was all brainstormed in 20-30 minutes. They subcontracted the background shot, did the studio and post-processing work and sent proofs to the clients fairly quickly.

Could an advanced amateur pull of the same shot? Probably, but the pro had to do it on time, on budget and not only that, it had to be publication-ready for the ad the shot was intended for.

Usually, briefs are more straightforward, but the bottom line is that a pro will produce what’s asked for and they’ll get it right the first time. If they don’t, they won’t keep many clients and won’t be a professional photographer for long.

Equipment

For the most part, equipment is tools, a means to an end. Some of the greatest photographers in history used relatively primitive equipment by today’s standards. In other words, a brand-new top-end camera is NOT going to make you a great photographer.

Ansel Adams used a fully manual camera — no autofocus, no auto-exposure, one shot and it took minutes to set up another exposure. Henri Cartier-Bresson had it slightly better with his Leica rangefinder, and one lens, a 50mm, for almost all of his life’s work. These guys were pros pros.

Oddly, I’ve looked through photos I made with a Nikon D100 — a positively ancient, heavy, slow and low-megapixel camera — and evaluated how good they were. Some of those prints were as good as any I’ve ever done with a modern Nikon Z8 or Z7ii. It was less about the camera than it was the craft.

On the other hand, you must have some decent equipment to capture decent photos. That usually takes some time to acquire — I have lenses I bought 25 years ago that I still use because they are great and work with a brand-new body. From time to time I will use film cameras. Start with a good camera body, and a couple of decent lenses for what you’re planning to photograph. Work with that until you start running into situations the equipment can’t overcome.

Example: shooting rocket launches means that you often can’t “zoom with your feet”, in other words, get closer. There are safety and security perimeters that keep on a couple of miles away at a minimum. So to get closeup shots of liftoff, you’ll need a long telephoto lens with good optics to bridge the gap.

Let’s say you’ve made the decision to get a super-tele lens to get those launch shots. You’ll notice very quickly just how expensive the top-end gear costs: $6500 for an 800mm Nikkor Z lens, $13,000 for a Canon 600mm super tele, and so on. Not cheap. Pros often make that investment because it makes the resultant shots easier to attain and therefore easier for them to sell their work. Amateurs have to decide if it is worth spending that much. Fortunately, there are mid-range lenses almost as good. For example, a Nikkor Z 160-600mm telephoto lens runs about $1600 new. It’s almost as good as the higher-end prime lenses and will satisfy about 95% of the use cases as the higher-end gear.

Again, it bears repeating that craft plays into this heavily: a pro will know how to use a particular lend effectively, and not only that, they’ll know its limitations and how to work around it much of the time.

Composition, Or Artistic Value Revisited

Composition matters. It mattered before photography (paintings) and it matters now as much as ever. Just like music theory, there is composition theory. Maybe you’ve heard of the Rule of Thirds, for example.

Pros almost always have spot-on composition. They also avoid some things like cutting off the top of a head in a portrait unless that was the intent. Amateurs often create their photos with flaws because they don’t know any better.

There are many tutorials online dealing with composition, and there are probably hundreds of textbooks with the same material available.

Use those texts as guidelines, but don’t be afraid to experiment if the situation allows for it. Creativity matters too, so flexing the imagination might result in something very pleasing and saleable.

Lighting

Photography is all about capturing light. While there is no one “everything” in photography, if there were, it might be lighting. Knowing it and using it to your advantage is truly key. Pros know lighting like the back of their hands, amateurs often leave to luck.

Example: In the case of launch photography, lighting can make a lot of difference. Shooting into the sun will leave a launching rocket in shadow with muted, washed out color in the background., Shooting with the sun behind your back will result in a well-lit and colorful photo.

In portraiture, a studio equipped with different lights allows nearly complete control of the structure of the lighting. It also allows for experimentation.

Do research into lighting; there are plenty of articles and books on the subject. Or, go to an art museum and look at the works of the master painters there.

Portrait photographers often use Rembrandt Lighting. Learn what it is, and look for examples in Rembrandt’s portraits. Look at other photographers who used it heavily. Maybe read a tutorial on how to create it. Fun fact: you can recreate “Rembrandt Lighting” with natural light, but knowing what it is the first step. There are other lighting styles, for example “butterfly lighting,” “loop lighting” among others. To learn more, I recommend this video by Mango Street on YouTube:

The Final Print

I’ll use prints and on-screen displays interchangeably. It’s the final part of the work, and to a viewer it is the photograph. It’s the sum of the technical craft (exposure, focus, composition, lighting) and ultimately, the vision you had when you pressed the shutter button.

Learn your editing software thoroughly, edit carefully and don’t go overboard with it. One thing I see all the time are hobbyist photographers who take landscapes or sunsets and then go into their editing software and “bake” the photo with far too much color saturation…way past even the Technicolor looks of the 1950’s. It looks very artificial and IMO ruins a perfectly great photo otherwise. Another thing I see recently are people overusing tools like Topaz Sharpen — they oversharpen the photo and give it an unnatural look that almost repels the eye.

With editing, there’s an old saying that applies: if you have a headache, take two aspirin, not the whole bottle.

Volume

Pros take a lot of photos. A typical wedding engagement might result in a thousand or more shots, from which they’ll cull to the best examples and finish in post-processing to show and sell to their client. A rocket launch might have 100+ photos of differing exposures, zoom lengths, etc.

Fun fact: a typical Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue contains far fewer than 200 photographs. The editors had 300,000 (in film) to as many as 1.2 million (digital) shots to choose from. I saw that in a documentary and that number stuck with me.

Amateurs don’t need to shoot at that sort of volume, but they should also take enough photos to allow for exposure bracketing, from different angles, focal lengths if the situation allows. Digital cameras make that cheaper, so take advantage of the flexibility. From there, choose the best ones and save the others somewhere in case you want to revisit them later for a fresh look.

The Bottom Line

A professional photographer produces outstanding work that people are willing to pay for. That good work is the summary of expertise, creativity, planning and execution. They are also able to create that level of work time after time. They leave as little to chance or guesswork is possible, and if they have to make a guess, it’s an educated one based on experience.

An amateur photographer may have all of those skills, but as a general rule to a much lower level. That’s fine, the amateur take photographs for pleasure and fun. It’s not their life’s work, it’s their hobby. That does not mean they cannot create professional work, but it is true that they are under much less pressure to do so every time.