QT, I don't determine whether someone is a professional by how much money they make with photography. I know a few amateurs who can produce professional quality work on demand whenever they want, and I have known professional photographers who were unprofessional and were only as good as their assistants that day. Believe me I've met many of those. And even some of the very well known are incapable of producing even the most rudimentary image without nearly all of the photographic work being done by others.
As for Tom Grill, I looked up his work and he seems to mostly do stock people work. The very generic kind, that does have a fairly large market. I know that many of the stock agencies have lists of images that have been recently asked for and they send those lists to photographers who may choose to shoot them on spec. I don't know how Tom Grill works, but he may very well work that way. Working purely on assignment with a deadline, high end clients with vast experience at assigning photography milling around and large amounts of money at stake tends to separate the men from the boys. Believe me when the client you are working with that day spent the previous week working with someone like Irving Penn you know the bar is set high.
Brian Ellis, you know of clients who buy their photographers equipment?!!! About equipment. An amateur only has to have the gear that they want. A pro has to have the gear that his client's images require. A pro with any sense has redundancy with all his gear, what if the deadline is tomorrow, it's midnight and your camera or lens or strobe pack breaks?. I had to have enough gear to be able to set up 4 complex LF sets simultaneously. Four Sinars all with auto ap or expolux shutters, redundant lenses, 4 camera stands, and enough lighting, light stands, clamps, reflectors, fill cards, etc. I would have much preferred to have that money in my pocket. An amateur has that choice, I didn't.
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