Professionalism defined...

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If I didn’t feel like a professional photographer before this last week or so, I certainly do now. Or, at least, this angle of thinking allows me to feel justified in making the ludicrously expensive purchase I indulged myself in over the weekend. I doubt it has escaped your attention that a new Apple store opened in Norwich on Saturday morning. Excited beyond any level which could possibly be deemed acceptable at such a prospect, I blazed into the bright lights and the beaming smiles (it just doesn’t happen in other shops), and… well, the atmosphere put me all in a tizzy. Charging through the hordes of ecstatic children and equally gleeful parents (that certainly doesn’t happen in other shops), I raced to the software section, hoping to find something fresh to liven up my Mac, something to put it through its gears.

Somewhere in my mind, I think I was actually hoping for some form of computer game to whisk me back to youthfulness, a Championship Manager 32, or a Red Alert 56, or whichever version we’ve got up to at the end of the new millennium’s first decade. It wasn’t to be, though. None of those games stirred the excitement I’m now used to, the excitement of football, or of cricket, darts (yes, I hear you, and I advise you to stay silent) and real ale. I wondered to myself, stroking the almost-stubbly bumfluff on my chin, have I finally begun to Grow Up?

Then it happened. The eyes spotted a familiar blue, and before you could say ‘tickle my fancy’ I’d given my bank account a bit of a stretch. Photoshop isn’t cheap, you know.

So, here I am, fiddling around with my new toy. At £615, I consider myself to have invested meaningfully in my future career, and to mark the occasion I have set up a dedicated photography desktop on my computer, devoid of iTunes, Facebook and Championship Manager. Odd how one can have every success with a series of commissions, work tirelessly to create a network of contacts and run out of midnight oil reading photography books, but it is only a childish impulse purchase at an unforgivably large price that makes one actually feel like a professional. Now, how do you work this thing…