I appreciate your comment but wanted to clear some things up:

- I reread the article and I can’t find any mention that you need lots of expensive gear to start out. I’m just saying that you need the right gear for the job. I started out with 5000 EUR worth of equipment. Not the best quality available but more than good enough for the kind of work I was doing then. And equally important: good enough to respond to the client’s needs in just about any situation I could logically expect. The gear you need depends on what you shoot. You can get by with an entry level dslr, a kitlens and some foamcore for portrait work but if you do weddings, you’ll need at least a backup body and lens for example.

- If you follow our and my (Bert’s) work, you’ll know that we are both gearheads but never cease to stress out that it’s not about the equipment. I can not remember advising anyone to buy unnecessary expensive equipment.

- This article may not be of interest to you but you are wrong in assessing our audience. We have many people who are thinking about starting a photography business. We try to produce some stuff for everyone but we cannot always target each and everyone.

- We started out as amateurs too and will never look down on anyone. We just say that going pro comes with responsabilities towards your clients, your business and yourself.

I’m sorry if our statements weren’t clear and do appreciate the feedback

Bert

I am a little upset at how someone can say, you need to buy this and that to make it in photography as a profession. My take is buy what you can in basics and utilize what you have to the best of your abilities. I have been doing this for almost two years, as I don’t have an additional 6 grand to put towards extras I need to make my pics pop. However, I have tried to take the best photos with what I have. You can go on many websites that have DIY (Do it Yourself softboxes, diffusers, backdrop stands, lights tands, flash studio strobes, etc. for little or no money.

If you are good a photography you should be able to take a pic and make it your own through conveying and placing people, or items in a way that is artistic and beautiful.. Just do it. The more you experiment, the better your photos will become. So don’t let some pro tell you that starting off as an amateur is lame, and you are part of a million other lame photographers’ out there. Everyone has to start from scratch at some point. Just keep taking pictures, and you will eventually make enough money here and there to get the pro stuff.

Good Luck Everyone and Never Let Anyone Tell You that You are Lame if you Don’t have All The EXPENSIVE stuff!!

I’m glad I found out about you through Confessions of a Photographer and now the LIME series seems to be even better and more informative. I’m finding out about all of this at the perfect time in my life. I’m 22 and just about to graduate from college. I know I want to work hard to make photography work because it’s what I really love to do. Problem is, I’m competing with so many other people who are just like me.

The information in your blog and videos is crucial to people like me who are just starting out and need all the advice they can get. I look forward to more posts and behind the scenes videos.

Thanks and take care!

-Charlie

another silly thing - not enough practice. for some reason I use ISO800 for some 50 snaps and it screw everything up without realizing it not until the photo was loaded to HDD.

great article Bert!

Cheers

I wrote school paper about quality management not so long ago. In the paper I talked about quality of photography servise. How is quality of photography mesured and what would be the ideal situation for photographer? What kind of things shooter has to know and be prepared for? Equipment was mention…in one sentence.

Most of the stuff I had to figure out myself as there is no certain way to mesure photography. And writing about it made me think things in a different way. Im not pro, just because Im too sure that I wouldn’t be consistent enough, quality of my work would have too much variation.

But what drove me to that write about photography and its quality was this huge amount of pros, or wannabe pros who produce bad images. What does flickr “pro”-sing mean? ;D

I ended up pretty much in the conclusions as you..