Pro vs Amateur: photography, software development, bodyboarding
We went for a short morning hike in Bold Park with my husband Alex today because our four year old daughter was super motivated to get to her daycare early to occupy the only pink box they have (handy!). We do the “chicken talk” non-stop when we spend time together, but today’s one was so good that I decided to put it in writing. Basically, we started discussing the difference between being a pro and an amateur - my part about photography, his part about software development and bodyboarding. It is already no surprise for us that software development and art have so much in common, but bodyboarding?..
I was contemplating coming back tomorrow morning with my camera to shoot beautiful firewood banksias that have started flowering, but complained to him that every time I want to go and shoot flowers I have this question popping up in my mind - just how many banksias can I shoot? I have them from any angle, at any stage, with any colour… just adding a couple of gigabytes to the library doesn’t seem like the right thing to do. Also, my studies successfully put me into learning mode where I try to learn something new every time I pick up my camera. It takes time to come up with the idea, to plan it, to study things that I don’t know how to do, and only then I am going to shoot. That seems to be a definition of the pro to me at the moment, while my whole project with flower photography obviously started as amateur (I would go out and shoot whatever I see). Nothing bad about it, just different.
Alex chimed in here and told me about his bodyboarding sessions - he started filming himself and it became obvious that the position of one hand is not correct, so he went out there with the only task - to concentrate on this hand position and correct it, nothing else. Amateurs rarely care about such things, they just go there and enjoy themselves, but only those small improvements and the motivation to actually learn how it is done gets one to the pro level.
And then, of course, our common grounds - software development (we both have IT background and even worked together for some time). He was sure at some point at his career that he got to the highest desirable point when a lot depended on him. But now, with his own business and a few working projects, he realised that he only became a pro when he developed a project by himself managing and controlling it from conceiving the idea to developing it to marketing and supporting it. Not relying on anybody to come and tell what to do. Not going with the flow and hoping it would work out by itself. Carefully planning and executing, with internal motivation, clear goal in sight and determination to get there.
I have almost stopped all activities on my flower photography at the moment because I can’t see a clear goal anymore. Plus, of course, intense studies take up all my brain space and time. I can’t even make myself to go through archives and line up a few photos for social media - so many tasks have higher priority! It always was in the mode “I will do what I can, and then I will see if it works out” - even though I can’t even tell what this “works out” means! That’s definitely not a pro, and my inner project manager quietly cries when hearing about such an approach. I know I can keep it as a hobby, not everything is a business, but my goal-oriented brain needs at least some direction, not a hamster wheel of endless photos to feed two seconds of attention span. I still have a very extensive library of flower photos and will post my favourites here and there, but my energy is going into self-growth now, and it feels so right.
