If this is the case, which I disagree that it is, then most people are wrong. Commercial and professional are not the same thing. There is a big difference between the two, which is usually obvious. A professional photographer is simply someone who sells their pictures, regardless of what kind of pictures they are, or their intended purpose. Fine art photography can certainly be a profession, but it is not a commercial profession. A commercial photographer is one who takes pictures that are specifically to be used for purposes other than simply being pictures, i.e. pictures for commercial use, such as advertisements. Commercial photographers are professional photographers, but not all professional photographers are commercial photographers. Commercial shooting is just one of many ways that a photographer can be considered a professional.
I did not use the word professional or amateur at all until you translated what I said as equating hand held solo shooting with the word amateur. That is not what I said at all. I do, indeed, make it clear that how the photographer looks is what I am talking about, when I say:
"He's ignorant for even thinking that you might be doing [commercial shooting] when you are out photographing by yourself with a hand held camera..."
What I stated with this was that someone who is out shooting alone with a hand held camera is almost certainly not doing commercial work, so should not have reasonably attracted any concern from a knowledgeable city employee (the opposite of an ignorant city employee).
So, what I said is all about how one looks or seems, and the assumptions that can be either reasonably or unreasonably made based on these things. It was not a statement of 100% fact or 100% equation, such as you took it and restated it in your post #11, when you said, "By yourself without a tripod=amateur?" What I stated was a generalization about what can be reasonably assumed about photographers based on how they look.
All I'm trying to say is that what you sez I sez ain't what I sez.
Additionally, I said that though the man may have been ignorant as to what type of photographer should reasonably be considered a suspect commercial shooter, he was just doing his job, trying to stick up for the city, and caused no harm.
The people you listed are most certainly not commercial photographers, as far as the work for which we best know them. They are editorial and/or fine art photographers, and professionals, and have done commercial work in their careers...but their famous work - the work that is the reason we know their names at all - is not commercial.
One can certainly take pictures out alone with a hand held camera that are later sold, and do it without a permit. I never stated otherwise, as you believe I did. I simply stated that one does not look commercial to any reasonable person if they are alone and hand holding. One can, indeed, sneak a commercial shoot in alone and hand held on public property. I am not arguing with you that this is possible or not. However, this is not the norm at all, and the sneakiness is possible because they don't look like they are doing commercial work...i.e they are alone and do not have a tripod! So, the commercial photographers who do this do it by not looking commercial. How do you intentionally make something not look commercial? By first realizing what looks commercial (tripods, models, assistants, lights, etc.), and then not doing it!
So, where is that list of universally-known commercial photographers (that is, the branch of professional photographers who produce imagery that is to be used commercially by a client) who shoot alone with handheld cameras? Use that to argue against my original point, which was quite clear enough to most.
P.S. What does FYVM mean?
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