Amateur and Pro

Never understood before that there is so much difference between taking pictures for myself and taking them for others. I know there shouldn't be, but there is. Especially when amateur is defined as the former and pro (for money) is the latter. All this is brought up by contemplating listing photos on Etsy!

Taking photos for myself, I still care if people like them. But it's all an exercise in seeing. Not a bad thing, but years of digital experiments with light, subject and composition take up a lot of disk space.

For example, I take pride in being able to crop in-camera, not understanding that cool composition might limit what can be done with the image later on. Getting the whole subject in the frame may result in more possibilities once I got it into Photoshop.

Now I want to list art prints of my photos on Etsy for others to appreciate -- and hopefully buy. So am thinking about my images as objects  -- commodities really -- and assigning value to them in a whole different way.

Am also less and less interested in taking pictures of trees and the sides of buildings...

Don't have any conclusion here. Except there's a lot to be said for looking at what you do through new eyes. What you find out -- about yourself and your art -- can be surprising.