Learning from the pros

 
Nikon D7200
Tokina 100mm f/2.8
f3 1/25 ISO 100 

I went to listen to a professional photographer speak last night. I see thousands of photographs every day and I'm lucky enough to be able to see the work of and interact with a couple of professionals. Even among the noise of the distilled talent of hundreds of thousands of amateur photographers worldwide, their work almost always stands out. For me, the notable thing about last night's pro tog was not the quality of his work but his attitude. The first thing that struck me was professionalism (which seems like a stupid thing to say when you've paid to listen to a pro, but bear with me). For serious amateurs like me and thousands of others, the quality of the shot - both technical and artistic - is everything. A pro tog's priority is different - you don't come back without the shot. The shot being the money shot, the shot that will sell. If your work doesn't sell, you don't eat. If you flog up to Shetland and the weather is "Scottish" for the week that you're there, you don't come back without the shot. When the camera is raised to the eye, the brain clicks into gear - quality is nice but it is secondary. What matters is, will it sell? For amateurs it's different. Whenever I photograph a kitten or a robin for this year's Christmas card, I know instantly what I've done but it's a very different process. 

The second interesting thing he had to say was about negative space. In short, lots. He had a semi artistic/scientific reason for this - environmental shots of wildlife, but mostly negative space is a commercial matter. Who buys colour photographs (colour because no-one buys black and white photographs of wildlife)? Magazines. If he shoots a technically perfect crop of a wildlife subject it will wind up in a column of images on the lower half of the page. If he frames the shot with the subject positioned in a corner and lots of negative space, it has the potential to be a double page spread. Why? Because the subs need somewhere to put the text, and magazines pay by the square metre. For him, negative space is firstly a commercial matter. Will it sell? My gut reaction to his shots illustrating negative space were different. I beat myself up because I can't cure the bad habit of cropping too tightly 90% of the time. I even kid myself that buying a full frame camera might help with that. But apart from a brief flirtation with I Can Haz Cheezburger a few years ago (don't laugh - read Clay Shirky on the subject), I block people who put text on photographs. And for people who put text on my photographs, I turn up at their house at 3am with a few of my mates. Or I would, if I had any. 

I don't have the talent to be a professional photographer. But more importantly, I don't have the attitude. 

My blood runs cold
My memory has just been sold
My angel is the centerfold



Annotated Bibliography
“There’s no place for lulz on LOLCats”. The role of genre, gender, and group identity in the interpretation and enjoyment of an Internet meme. (2014) First Monday 19 (8) http://dx.doi.org/10.5210/fm.v19i8.5391
There's no place for laughs on the Internet. 

Shirky, C. (2010) Cognitive surplus: Creativity and generosity in a connected age. 
This is how we built the web. We were innocent. We were naïve. And now it's too late.

Are memes the future of news? (2012) https://memeburn.com/2012/05/are-memes-the-future-of-news/
Read this one, think about Farrage and Trump then just go and think about what you've done for a while. You can come down when it's time for dinner.