As many of you know I enjoy digital photography as one of my hobbies. With the advancement in digital imaging technology, almost anyone can take great looking photos. Having said that, I feel the difference between a “professional” or even “paid amature” is the ratio of keeper shots to shots taken. For example, when I was shooting Lena during her many running events and Ironman, I would take close to a thousand shots per event and end up keeping (or liking enough to keep) a few dozen. This might be attributed to me being hyper-critical of my own work but if I’m honest, the photos that did not make the cut were not that great.
While I am nowhere near the caliber of someone that is considered a professional photographer or even a “paid amature”, it was nice to be asked by the editor of TVTechnology magazine to use the photo below in the February issue of their magazine. They are doing a piece about possible new restrictions on transporting lithium-ion batteries on airplanes. I have been told a complimentary copy of the magazine will be mine as “payment” for me granting permission to use the image. I still don’t think this qualifies as a paying gig though. The moment someone pays for my camera equipment or asks that I use their products I’ll know I made the jump to pro. In the meantime, I’ll be keeping my day job.
The other photo that was published (without my permission) was one that I took during the Santiago Fire here in Orange County. It was a terrible photo. Sort of blurry, my settings were not quite right, and the framing could have been better. The wind was howling, smoke was blowing and I was trying to stabilize the body of the camera on top of the open door of my car. Guess this would eliminate me as a candidate for combat photography. The picture wound up on this Russian website. If you want to run it through Google translator go for it. Essentially the article says:
Blogs will never replace or even the potesnyat media, and so far only, which they have? . It is faster story of the events that have taken place nearby.. During Katrina passed several people “lead from the field, reporting on the unfolding events”. But it was only blogging, and now it has more tools available to people to inform the online community.
The most vividly is confirmed forest fires in California. People are trying to use virtually all the available services to tell and show what is happening. In the search for blogs by Google can find tens of thousands on the subject over the past week. At videoobmenny site YouTube was downloaded more than 3000 reels from California fires. As CenterNetworks writes, Flickr is loaded into an average of one photo per minute with the tag “fire”….
Below the article the author does give me credit (tigerpaw511) even though he never contacted me directly for permission to use the image, I certainly don’t mind. 
As a side note to the Russian article, there are some comments for the author. One of them actually criticizes me for not helping the fireman while I stood around and took pictures. However, another poster simply asks him to be honest and tell if he would REALLY help out. I’m not sure how things are done in Russia but I pay taxes so trained professionals can handle situations like this. Even if I wanted to help, what do you think the fireman or police would do if I tried to get close enough..they wouldn’t let me.
