Phew, that didn’t happen.

I try to constantly educate myself and understand the world I live in. Sometimes, it’s easier than others, but for the most part if I have a question, I ask, or look it up – gotta love the internet (although I do sometimes miss the smell of the card holder box at the library that held the Dewey decimal system in there…yeah, I’m old(er)).

A constant “conversation” of sorts that keeps recurring in my life is, “Who/what exactly is a photographer?” Seems like an easy enough answer — “Someone who takes pictures, etc”

Here’s the Wikipedia definition – “A photographer (from Greek (photos), meaning “light”, and (graphos), meaning “written” is a person who takes photographs. A professional photographer uses photography to earn money; amateur photographers take photographs for pleasure and to record an event, emotion, place, or person. A professional photographer may be an employee, for example of a newspaper, or may contract to cover a particular event such as a wedding or graduation, or to illustrate an advertisement. Others, including paparazzi and fine art photographers, are freelancers, first making a picture and then offering it for sale or display. ” Full link – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photographer

I keep coming across blogs and articles, etc that talk about the definition – and if a photo is taken with a camera phone, it’s clearly not professional (by people’s opinions, of course). In fact, some guy just got a 2 page spread in the most recent Sports Illustrated for photographing training camps on his iPhone with Instagram.

WHO CARES!

I consider myself a freelance photographer. I get paid to take pictures and travel and I’m happy with that, and I guess by the definition above, that makes me “professional”. Whatever. I’m Ginger de Vegh. And I take pictures – some good and some bad. (By the way, here’s an interesting article I recently read talking about what defines a “famous” photographer - http://photofocus.com/2012/07/22/famous-photographers-really/ )

The purpose of this blog was that I’ve visited NYC/NJ and Boston numerous times (grew up in NJ and lived in Boston for a year) and last May I visited both, again, and for some reason, I didn’t feel like pulling out my big camera every 5 seconds. So, I decided to capture the cities from my iPhone – through the App Hipstamatic. I loved the results and hope to do something with some of the shots one day. I will continue to shoot certain cities this way because I think it’s just a different viewpoint then the standard, everyday photo that we see of some of the same places. These are some of my favorites from the trip.