The 7 Levels of Photographers

By Raoul Isidro

 

1. The Slave

This is the lowest level of a photographer. All famous photographers are slaves. We the viewing public are their masters. All award winning, best selling photographers are just slaves to our opinion, money, and fame. It is the public who gives rise to these slaves. It is the public's design to elevate these slaves to their arena.

2. The Gladiator

This is the next step up of a photographer from being in the lowest level as a slave. The photographer gets to slug it out with other photographers and it's survival of the fittest. Struggling to get business to fund the photography spirit. Helped on by either a high salaried wife or just freeloading from parents.

3. The Freeman

A higher level of a photographer from the struggling Gladiator. The person has at last tasted the sweet smell of freedom by hooking a higher salary of a stable job to overtake the measley trickle of photography income.

4. The General

The photographer has become a small dictator. He (usually male) dictates when and where he will use the camera equipment and edit those images on the computer. He has other things to occupy his mind, like trying to keep his job in an unstable market.

5. The Senator

The photographer has now tasted real power. He is no longer a slave of the equipment that captures light and preserves it in a chemical or digital form. He is satisfied with just viewing and critizing photography works and slugging it out with other equal level Senators on photography chat sites.

6. The Emperor

The Mr Know-It-All and expert photographer has become the highest revered human being on the aspects of photography. He is a legend (in his own mind). Nobody tells him what to do. If he wants the camera to stay in the closet for six weeks, it stays there six weeks, and nothing can change that. The magazine subscriptions about cameras and photography have increased tenfold helped on by a higher than ever salary of an entirely unrelated field of profession.

7. The Gods

Has left the position of being behind the viewfinder and shifted radically to being in the field of view.

 

 

"The greatest camera in the world is the one you hold in your hands when shit happens."

Raoul Isidro