>>3724030As a professional engineer, I'm sure you can also appreciate a barrier to entry, educational requirements, a code of ethics, etc.
Would you drive across a bridge built by someone who just decided to call themselves an engineer one day? Probably not. Would you have open heart surgery from someone who decided to call themselves a doctor?
Is someone a professional because they get paid? Maybe, but then that means that literally everyone is a professional, from professional cashiers to professional shelf stockers to professional dishwashers. The irony is that those people don't have to call themselves professionals, because there was a barrier to entry, and some actual metric for their job performance. If you say you're a cashier, it's implied that someone agreed that you were qualified for the position, and that you're competent enough not to get fired. No such crucible exists for photography. The point is, if a definition is so general that it defines everything, then that definition is worthless.
So why the pedantry? Because photography is full of phonies, hucksters, frauds, insecure manbabies, and charlatans, and there needs to be a barrier to entry to keep those fuckers out. It's literally meaningless to say that you're a professional photographer. You got paid? So what? It means you fooled someone. It doesn't mean that you priced things fairly, it doesn't mean you were educated (in fact, overwhelmingly most don't have any formal training in photography), it doesn't mean that a governing agreed that you were good enough and gave you a license to practice, it means that you got paid. That's it.
The funny thing is? Even artists don't go around calling themselves "professional" artists. You're either an artist, or you aren't. The closest thing photography has to a profession also don't call themselves professionals, they call themselves "photojournalists", because that word actually means something. It means that there's at least a code of ethics.
