Nikio

In every field of human creativity you usually have two separate domains of creation; professional and the amateur. In many cases the amateurs are inspired by the professionals but pro's don't care much about the amateurs. In many cases. But not in all cases.

Especially in music many professional composers and musicians study native and folk music for inspiration. In painting something similar happened in late 19th century with Paul Gauguin who studied "primitive art" and childish drawings in order to connect with the primal instincts of our painting skills.

But there better examples. In astronomy pro's and amateurs work hand in hand. Ever since the equipment (telescopes, ccd chips, etc) became ever-more available, amateurs take a huge part in collecting all sorts of data that is impossible for the professionals to handle. Amateurs may not have the largest telescopes at their hand (quite frankly, oftentimes you don't need large telescopes), but they have lots and lots of time, and more importantly, they are in great number, so their contribution sums up. For the last 20 years a lot of asteroids and other small bodies within our solar system were discovered by the amateurs. Simply put; you just have to continuously photograph small portions of the sky and search for "stars" that move in relation to the others. Whatever moved may be a candidate for an asteroid or a comet. Detection of such things takes a lot of time which is something that you just might not have if you work on a large professional telescope (there are "better" things to do there). This kind of research is ideal for the amateurs, and professional community benefits greatly from the work of committed hobbyists.

Until recently professional photography and filmography didn't bother much for the amateurs. And many of the old time pro's still look down upon the amateur creativity. But I think we should be more careful. Amateurs of today can have almost the same kind of equipment as professionals and in these terms there is almost no distinction left. Sometimes you will see a bunch of amateurs with Canon EOS 1DS mkIII . Dedicated amateurs are no longer different in that respect.

But they do different things. Since they don't have responsibility towards the client, they can try and do so much more. The digital revolution lowered the price of failure to almost zero, so people try really absurd things and many times the results are surprising.
Just take a look at this:


Can you imagine somebody spending 500 EUR worth of film for this? You know, just to have some fun with a rotten apple? Of course not. We had "better" things to do with film. The price of failure was high and people didn't dare to try out these crazy ideas so nothing original was never produced. When the price of failure is high you stick to the old and well tested methods, of course you perfect them, but you don't innovate. If you see the collection of what we did on film, you may see a lot of perfection but not much innovation.

Things now changed and if one looks at Flickr, one may find the craziest things possible. People just experiment as they never did before. And I believe that professionals can learn from them. To often pro's don't have the time or energy to do this sorts of tests, but amateurs do. And pro's can learn from them a lot. There is no reason to look down upon them. We'd be all better of working hand in hand.