Toronto Photography Meetup Group

Guild? So signing up one's children for years of indentured servitude in order to possibly get them into a limited access skilled trade?

Where do I sign up?

I agree with dcsang that it would be impossible to create any sort of governing body or guild that would be able to guarantee a minimum service level without being encumbered with a significant amount of bureaucracy. In addition, "Joe Punchclock" and "Sally Housecoat" won't know the difference.

Clients don't understand or care about whether you have studied the relationship between fstops and shutter speeds or if you have any clue about sync speeds and white balance. Even a long list of accreditations is only relevant amongst serious photographic circles. The client's expectations falls somewhere between lowest cost and acceptable quality. For most jobs, it is only the photographer that knows how much risk he/she is exposing to the client and how adequate he/she is. While I still believe that a pursuit for self-improvement raises the bar personally, this unfortunately, is a hard point to sell to the client.

A pro that is destined to futility are those that either drop their rates or proclaim that amateurs are "stealing" away all the business. If a pro tries to win customers solely through attrition, the pro, having way more at stake financially will lose to the amateur, being able to do almost as much with much less.

In the market segment that is hotly contested by the the majority of pros that are worried about these same aspiring amateurs, many of those pros have left the red oceans and differentiated and distanced themselves. They might have offered a unique concept with strong branding to go with it or a comprehensive suite of services where photography is only a small complement to their overall business portfolio. Whatever the case may be, these pros will never feel threatened by aspiring amateurs good, bad or indifferent because they've created demand in different market spaces. As the tide turns, these fleet-footed pros would've moved on with it leaving those remaining to drown or complain ad nauseam.

Gotcha, so this is more for peer recognition and respect. I mean, you have to be good to collect the points and gain that status after all. It's something I should look into. Thx for the info and congrats on attaining that accreditation! Cheers.