Football Vs Photography

[Swisstony10]

The "What Makes a Pro Different to an Amateur" debate has always raged, rages, and will continue to rage in various posts on this and many/any other photography boards. I was listening to the radio and in the "Sports" news (which is essentially a 20-second round-up of general sporting news, tacked onto the end of 5 minutes of someone prattling on about the weekend's football (and I'm in the UK, so for those of you in the colonies , that's soccer) activity). There are always several sound-clips of various football teams' managers rattling off a list of the reasons why it's everybody else's fault that they didn't win their particular match.

Now, these players who are in the upper leagues are professional footballers. They don't just make a living from playing football, they make an EXTREMELY GOOD living from playing football - many of them earn hundreds of thousands of pounds a year from their profession, and associated sponsorship and advertising deals. This morning, some manager or other (I neither know nor care which team of Professional Footballers he manages) was doing the usual "I think we played very well, and to be honest we deserved to win, but the referee got some decisions wrong.." nonsense, and he actually managed to blame some of it on the fact that the pitch was not the same condition that they're used to practising on, as it had been affected by the weather (a factor which really could've been taken into account, given that it's winter, and that winter does tend to happen every year, right in the middle of the football season).

Now, can you even BEGIN to imagine as, for example, a professional wedding photographer, earning a fraction of what these "professional" footballers are paid, giving a bride and groom their wedding album containing a dozen blurred and noisy images and saying "I think I took these pictures pretty well. To be honest, they deserved to be better, but I do all my practising in my living room because of the nice light, and there's a carpet in there. There was a stone floor in the church, and also high windows which I'm not used to, and also the vicar's decision to disallow my flash went against me...I still want paying..." ?

Ok, so that was more of a rant about how much football and footballers get on my wick, but I still think the analogy is appropriate.

Russ.

[tan2sie6]

Interesting post you have here Swisstony10. I had a nice read.

[OsmosisStudios]

Excellent point.