This article first appeared in 2002. Since then, the newspaper that I work for has bcome part of a smaller company bt otherwise it all still holds true!

It will probably come as no surprise to you that I believe passionately in passing on the knowledge that I have built up over my relatively short career. I work for a newspaper publishing group, part of the massive News Corp Worldwide organisation, that specialises in educational publishing so it seems fitting that we are amongst the first to help to educate photographers.

Every photographer needs work. You have to work to live, pay your bills and have a life. Unless the amount of work is growing exponentially to match the supply of new entrants to the profession then each of us will be doing less. Maybe that's why so many photographers are bemoaning the ease with which they perceive the newcomers seem to become established.

Maybe it's true, and maybe it isn't. The one clear fact is that just because we have served our time and become experienced professionals, we don't have the right to the limited pool of work out there.

This started me thinking about when I actually became a professional photographer. Was it when I graduated from college? No way. Was it when I did my first paid commission? No. My second? No. The only answer that I could find was that it was a gradual thing. Little by little I learned on the job. Day by day I acquired the necessary skills and one day I was more of a professional than I was a wannabe. I have no idea when that day was - hell, it might be a few years in the future!

The profession consists of an incredibly diverse bunch of people, with diverse backgrounds and an equally wide range of career paths so it seems that those pro's who talk about having served their time might just be referring to a golden age that never really existed.

It's true that some of the kit that I used whilst I learned my trade seems a little basic when compared to modern kit. I suspect it was ever thus, the Nikon FMs and Olympus OM1s that I cut my teeth on were great cameras and all of those prime lenses were pretty sharp - if difficult to focus at speed. I learned how to do things the hard way, sure, but today's up and coming young photographers have just as much to learn. Same quantity of knowledge, just different stuff. After all I never learned to wet print a glass plate, something that some of the old hands that were around in my early days remembered with a small tear in their eyes. Bygone times.

So that was then, and this is now. The profession has to deal with a moving target presented by clients whose needs are constantly shifting. Their acceptance of mediocrity has been a talking point amongst photographers for years, but as far as I can see the technical quality of the photography on offer has never been higher. Photographers at all levels are being asked for levels of creativity that were the preserve of few clients only fifteen years ago. And this is the crux of what is happening in the industry.

Advances in equipment and in technology have always made the impossible merely difficult and the difficult little more than routine. The area that we can all concentrate on now is being creative. I for one welcome everything that helps me to make my work better, and technical gizmos that free my thoughts from the boring mechanics of photography allowing me to be more of an image creator than a picture taker are welcome additions to my kit.