Hi Rob: Can't professionals be amateurs? As professional is someone who gets paid for what s/he does. An amateur is someone who does what s/he does for the love of it. It seems to me that the confluence brings the best of both worlds.
Mike.
I think Elliott Erwitt is a living example of this. He'd haul truckloads of equipment on jobs, like the kitchen job in Moscow where he grabbed Kruschiev and Nixon's finger, but when the working day was over he'd grab his beat-up Leica and do street. On the job he was a pro, making money, but when he'd pick up that Leica he was an amateur still doing what he loved. Now Rob's in a position where he can do the amateur thing full-time. Making money has nothing to do with the love and excitement that goes into it. There are grubby pros in any field who are there only because they can make some money at it. I've seen plenty of them in software engineering and programming. But the guys who were good at software engineering were good because they loved it. It's the same in photography.
