Viewpoint

With this year’s Amateur Photographer of the Year about to launch, AP’s editor ponders the relevance of the word ‘amateur’ in 2018

In 1863, at the age of 48, Julia Margaret Cameron was given a camera as a gift from her daughter, and within little more than a decade she created hundreds of portraits of eminent figures in Victorian society including Charles Darwin and Alfred, Lord Tennyson. Despite her impressive output and the high standard of her work, Cameron was classed as an amateur photographer.

Five years after Cameron’s death The Amateur Photographer magazine was launched: ‘A popular journal devoted to the interests of photography and kindred arts and sciences’. More than a century later AP is still going strong, but the definition of what it means to be an ‘amateur’ is equally unclear.

The line between ‘amateur’ and ‘professional’ has never been a sharp one, but it gets more blurred by the year as technology enables anyone with a modicum of competence to shoot marketable work and find an audience, be it through selling stock, shooting weddings or building a big Instagram following and getting sponsored. There are many photographers who market themselves as pros these days, but how many actually earn a proper living and pay their mortgage from their photography earnings? Fewer than ever, sadly. Even the most successful pros now earn most of their income teaching others.

What it takes to become pro

One reason why Cameron was so prolific was because she didn’t have to worry about money – she even employed maids who chased potential portrait subjects down the street. Cameron had all the gear, and plenty of ideas, too.

Over 150 years after Cameron started taking photos, it’s still the affluent amateurs who buy most of the expensive equipment (for proof, wander around The Photography Show.) They’re the ones with well-paid jobs and generous pensions, while today’s average pro has to justify every purchase on business grounds. The winner of APOY 2017 was Henrik Spranz, a software developer from Austria

Most pros started out reading AP, and many still do. About 15% of current AP readers are pros and many more occupy that space between pro and amateur, earning a few quid here and there. The title of our magazine is now an anachronism, like Radio Times. Its value is in its heritage, not in its relevance. AP is for everyone who loves photography, irrespective of how they earn a living.

The only exception is our annual Amateur Photographer of the Year (APOY) competition, which launches this week (see page 29). It is still only open to amateurs, who we have arbitrarily decided is ‘a person who earns 10% or less of their income from photography or photographic services’. But this is rather difficult to police without asking for tax returns. Just because someone has a professional website doesn’t make them a pro. Often they’re projecting an aspiration, rather than a reality.

Perhaps we should just save a lot of hassle, open the competition to all, and judge the pictures on the basis of their merit rather than worrying that the winner of the landscape round might turn out to have made some money shooting a few weddings. What do you think?

‘AP is for everyone who loves photography, irrespective of how they earn a living’