Wouldn't it be nice if the photos would come out of the camera just the way you want them to be? Crispy colors, lens corrected and perfect lighting so when you come back from a shooting all you need to do is plug your camera into the USB port and upload the images onto your webserver. Unfortunately that is not the case and is exactly that what will make a professional taken photo look different to a photo taken by an amateur or a real estate agent. It might even be fair to say "a professional edited photo" instead of "a professional taken photo" because even a monkey can push a button.

The better your equipment the better the photo the camera spits out will look like but it's still a long way from being perfect. In my opinion the photo shooting is 20% of the job. If I am at the house for 1 hour I will spend at least another 4 hours processing the photos. When shooting I don't just walk in there and take a single flashed photo of every room. I carefully look at the room and make sure everything is in it's place. Curtains, pillows, lamps, everything. Find the best angle for the shoot, setup the tripod, take the photo. That is 20% of the job. Sure you need a bit of experience and a routine for it, but there really is not much too it. No rocket science required. My seven year old twins could do that.

Now comes the rest. The 80% that make all the difference. Stuff the amateur and the real estate guy can not do and that is why you do the job. Here is where skills kick in and you need to know how things are done and you need to do them good. In my opinion photography is overrated and a real estate photo guy with a camera in his hand thinking he is an artist puts a smile on my face. A real estate photographer does as much art as a plumber fixing a pipe. Same thing for wedding photography, same thing for any other 20th century photography.

You think you are an artist, you are not even 20% of that but you can go home and make your work shine with a computer and you can turn whatever your camera has seen into art. Todays photography art is done at home on the computer and not at the time the photo was taken. 80% Photoshop is what makes the difference, believe it or not.