P for professional

Two years ago, I moved just outside of Boston to attend photography school. I spent my entire senior year of undergrad ITCHING to go. Having just come back from spending the year in Paris and spending most of my free time taking pictures, I knew exactly what I wanted to do. I didn't really care about French literature (my apologies to any professors reading this - while it's a fascinating subject, it's certainly not something I wanted to build a career out of!), and I wanted to be a photographer.

Senior year was painful for me, academically speaking. I did very well in all of my classes, but my heart wasn't in it. I was doing the work just for the sake of doing it, so I could graduate and get the heck out of dodge. Not that college wasn't amazing - I now know that I will NEVER have as much free time as I did then, and life will probably never be quite as carefree. Being the planner that I am, I spent an inordinate amount of time figuring out what school I wanted to go to for photography, where I would live, and how I would support myself while I was in school.

Once I picked a school, everything else fell into place pretty quickly. I moved to Boston and threw myself into the photograpy program. I LOVED it. A year and a half seemed like sooooo long, but you know what? It's not. It flew by. After a whirlwind of studio classes, learning classic wedding posing, and going out and photograping every knitter I could get my hands on in a 20-mile radius -- yes, that was a real project. No, you won't find the images on this blog. That was back before I knew what I was doing -- the dust settled and we were....done.

I graduated!

Holy crap.

I'm now the proud holder of a Professional Photography Certificate. But guess what? It's worthless.

Let me explain before anyone jumps down my throat.

Clients will never hire me to photograph their pets, their children, or their wedding, because I have a piece of paper that says I'm a Professional Photographer. Honestly, no one cares about that piece of paper. To me, being a professional doesn't just mean that you know how to properly expose a backlit image, or that you can set up studio lights properly and not have them fall on your model's head, or that your camera cost more than your car (although all these things are helpful...possibly with the exception of that last one).

What makes a professional?

One word: money.

Ha, just kidding. It's your clients, and how you treat them, and the work that you deliver to them. You need all three.

In my opinion, if you have clients and you deliver fabulous work to them, but you treat them like second class citizens that should feel privileged to have your "artistic vision" at their disposal, you are not a professional. While I believe that we as photographers have a responsibility to educate our clients about our work, the fact remains that without them, we don't have a job. We need to deliver knock-their-socks-off images, while showing them customer service that not only meets, but far exceeds their expectations.

My diploma doesn't say anything about that, and unfortunately it's not something that can be taught in school. Regardless, I'm so happy to have had the experience of going through the photography program, and I would do it all over again if I had the choice. I'm so excited to be building my business at this time and I'm very optimistic about what the future holds.

Even if that diploma spend the next 30 years in a tote up in the attic, I'm glad to have it.