Professional Photographer:
A professional photographer takes every aspect of photography very seriously. They invest far more time, money and hard work into their craft. Photographic equipment, along with post-production software and hardware, tends to be where a professional photographer’s biggest costs lie — and the widest expense of all is usually the range of lenses needed to cover different genres of photography.
Becoming a professional takes real commitment – a lot of time and effort go into delivering your best work. The title “professional” only carries weight when the end result truly reflects it. A professional photographer might take on all sorts of work, from wedding photography to product photography and beyond.
Amateur Photographer:
Plenty of people who are passionate about photography work in entirely different professions, picking up photography as a part-time pursuit. Amateur photographers take all sorts of photos – not for money, but purely out of passion. They’re not necessarily aiming for a professional-standard result; instead, they shoot in whatever way they enjoy most.
Amateur photographers aren’t especially concerned with buying expensive equipment – they simply work with whatever they’ve got. For them, photography is about satisfying their own passion, first and foremost.
Between the fairly well-defined line separating professional and amateur photographers, there’s actually a third category – independent photographers. As the name suggests, these photographers aren’t tied down by the constraints of professional work, yet they’re not employed full-time elsewhere either.