I am not yet a professional photographer when measured by the remuneration criteria and yet I do create images that are on par with many professional nature photographers. I think in general, compact cameras and Smartphone cameras have had little impact on my genre of photography, in particular bird photography, because of the limitations of the lenses. On the other side of the coin, the quality of professional camera equipment has also continued to evolve and given me the opportunity to shoot high speed sequences with mind boggling quality. I have never used filters and find the idea antithetical to the realism I am trying to capture.
The other area of discussion this week was about what/ who are photographers and professionals. The answers lie in the definition of both those terms and the subsequent frame of reference that offers for discussion. I expressed an opinion that the evolution of the technology and the medium perhaps warrant a different set of definitions than the classic one in the Oxford dictionary and most certainly have come to require some qualifiers or further refinement of the concept of each. In the end though it is impossible to draw a definitive box around either and there will always be people who blur the boundaries. I think that is a good thing.
Ashley Rose Photography Journal 