from Amateur to Expertise
"Amateur" is not really a distinction of skill. Many amateurs are unskilled, but some are not. We "amateurs" pursue the projects we do for the love (Latin: amat) of the subject but rarely for the recognition or profit given to experts or professionals.
I found an interesting perspective of amateurs and expertise recently while reading Vilhelm Fusser’s Towards a Philosophy of Photography. The author uses a parallel simile of photography being like playing a game of chess. Some players play the game according to what has already been done by others, they study old games, learn old tactics, repeat old moves, and so on. They get "better" but without innovating, i.e. (id est, that is to say) they only measure themselves against the achievements of others. These, according to Fusser, are amateurs.
Some players, however, look for new moves, ways to play the game in unique ways, innovating, playing around what has been done before and surprising their opponents and onlookers and audiences as a result. These amateurs are on their way to expertise. Not necessarily "experts"--able to make a living based upon their skills and knowledge--but growing through a focus on a chosen skill or branch of human endeavor.
I came across another apparent ambivalence between amateurs and professionals while talking to my daughter recently. She works in graphic design and advertising, a field which suffers from a similar level of saturation to digital photography. While she complained about the difficulty of finding respect and recognition for her work because the people who need her skills think that with the internet full of lunch plate snapshots, videos of cats, and websites built from click-and-drag templates, anyone ("any amateur" was the phrase she resented most) can do what she does.
To me, the appeal and strength of her expertise is founded on hours of amateur practice with the cameras and digital sketching tools we gave her on gift-giving occasions in her youth. The distinctions between amateurs and professionals aren’t always that great. Over time she has made me proud and pleased at the task commitment she showed in making her ideas work and getting the vision she had in her mind to be seen by a wider audience, whether they appreciate it or not.
As ever, if we are doing something we love we can worry less about categories and labels, and focus more on what the artifacts and experiences we create actually say, the story they tell, and the meanings they carry.