What makes a photo a "professional" photo?

[folonik]

What makes a photo a "professional" photo? A newbie question...

Like whats the deal with profesional photographers, what makes their photos "better" than the rest of us? Whats the mark, the significance, difference to casual photos?

[D70FAN]

What makes a photo a "professional" photo? A newbie question...

Like whats the deal with profesional photographers, what makes their photos "better" than the rest of us? Whats the mark, the significance, difference to casual photos?

A professional photo made money. ;) As soon as you sell a picture it becomes a professional photo. That doesn't mean that you are a professional photographer. All kidding aside though...

Professional photos in your frame of usage, means a photo taken by a person who makes their living taking pictures. Typically, a professional knows how to use and control light, color, composition, and post processing, to make the image interesting and desirable to other people willing to pay for that picture. That doesn't necessarily make the photo better, but chances are that, because of training and experience they are more sellable on the average. When you do something every day you tend to learn the skills necessay to get paid for it. I can tell you that shots that I thought were Pulitzer grade stuff (when I was younger) were shot down in flames by editors and buyers. Which is why this is still a hobby.

There are a lot of very well excecuted photos, by amatures and professionals alike, on these forums. What you may notice is that the professional and advanced-amature shots are more consistant in quality and composition, shot to shot, and that low quality "snap-shots" are not typically posted.

This is my personal take on your question(s).

[Rhys]

A professional photo is a photo taken by somebody that sells their work as part of a business. The quality of their photography has nothing to do with it. I have seen some ghastly photos used commercially. I remember one advertising a brand of mashed potatoes which was half in focus and half out. It was a very poor photo that looked as though the advertiser had hired a 2-year-old to take the picture.

The highest quality photos don't come automatically. To get a photo of high quality, one must take many and select the very best. Typically, 10% of one's photos will be excellent and the rest will be all grades downwards from that.

A lot of photographic sales is location - I sold a photo to a national newspaper because I was in a better location to take the photo than the hack photographer who was there, working for the paper. Of course, being a hack photographer employed by the paper, all the hack has to do is to turn in a photo - it doesn't have to be good. He's employed to bring back photos - not necessarily good photos.

[folonik]

Wow! Thanks for your answers. :)

Im pretty much satisfiede but what does composition mean?

[John_Reed]

Wow! Thanks for your answers. :)

Im pretty much satisfiede but what does composition mean?What is "composition?"

It's the arrangement of objects in your photo to make the overall presentation of the photo more or less attractive to those who view it. There are many books written on the subject, and it's something which few of us amateurs really totally grasp. But if you think of photographers (or painters) whose work you really admire, chances are the artist has a good sense of how objects should be arranged, or composed, to make a pleasant viewing experience. One old "rule of thumb," just as an example, has to do with the "Golden Mean," which says that your center of interest should be about 1/3 in from the edge and also 1/3 in from the top or bottom of the photo. This axiom can be varied, but it's not a bad place to start. If you watch movies, you'll generally see directors/camera operators placing their subjects by this rule, for relatively static scenes. But don't take my word for it - go read a few books or take a couple of classes on this subject. There's obviously a lot to learn!

[Norm in Fujino]

Wow! Thanks for your answers. :)

Im pretty much satisfiede but what does composition mean?

Take a read at this:

http://photoinf.com/General/KODAK/guidelines_for_better_photographic_composition_int roduction.html

[D70FAN]

[QUOTE=Norm in Fujino]Take a read at this:

QUOTE]

Thanks Norm, another good pointer, simple and to the point. I once took a college course that took 6 weeks to teach these simple steps, but we were working with film so the results and analyisis took a week. Ain't digital wonderful?

The trick is to practice these guidelines until you can compose and shoot in the time it takes to press the shutter. It's why camera shot-to-shot speed is important as you sometimes need to do "composition bracketing". That is... shooting individual frames quickly at several distances and perspectives, and another great advantage to shooting digital.