Yes but perhaps it's like any professions. Lawyers are an honorable profession with all levels of merit and expertise. High end lawyers are probably not thrilled with their reputation of the proverbial ambulance chaser, even though they too could be considered doing a necessary job. They lawyer jokes probably don't really sit well with them even if one considers them to have merit.
Lets face it, photography is a career that anyone can do. And almost anyone can take a great picture, even if it's just once in a while. Also it's highly subjective if someone likes the results, and it can also be affected by any number of things. The person may or may not even know what they look like. They may be difficult to photograph. Some people are photogenic, which is not necessarily defined by how "good" they look. Sometimes the photographer and the subject just don't "mesh". Tons of stuff can affect how good or bad a picture is.
But hopefully a true professional is always striving to remove as many the the negative variables as possible to get consistently good pictures. '
And price. Price is usually the barometer of how good someone is. Not always, but usually. Because price is determined not by costs but by an arbitrary number that has to do with how busy a photographer wants to be. The busier he/she gets, the more the price goes up. The price is the variable of how he/she controls their time. Because this is not like a store, where you bring something in the back door, mark it up, and send it out the front. It's hands on, limited product, limited time, limited output. And that is controlled by the price.
And that's why we have the saying, if you sell your picture for $10, that's what it's worth and if you can sell it for $100 or $1000, that's what it's worth.
