{"id":6,"date":"2016-02-15T10:10:33","date_gmt":"2016-02-15T10:10:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/photo.benjamin-m-weilert.com\/?p=1"},"modified":"2016-02-15T10:10:33","modified_gmt":"2016-02-15T10:10:33","slug":"hello-world-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/photo.benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/2016\/02\/15\/hello-world-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Making the Leap"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\t\t\t\tGreetings! My name is Benjamin M. Weilert and I&#8217;m an amateur photographer.<br \/>\nActually, now I&#8217;d like to consider myself as a professional photographer.<br \/>\nThis happened slowly, taking pictures over time to refine my craft was quite the fun adventure and now I have quite a portfolio of interesting photographs that are now lining the walls of my house. For the longest time, I always would consider myself &#8220;amateur&#8221; because I wasn&#8217;t confident enough to compare myself to other photographers out there. I would merely take the best photos I could and keep it at that. It wasn&#8217;t until I started diving into post-processing of RAW images from my Nikon D7000 that I realized my pictures really &#8220;popped&#8221;. Shortly before this, I had started entering my photographs into various online contests to see how they stacked up against other photographers. Soon, I&#8217;d collected a few wins and my confidence was built up. Then I started entering into more serious photography contests. My first foray into this realm gave me a second place finish behind the &#8220;best in show&#8221; photograph, which I felt was actually pretty good, all things considered. The next year I submitted my photos again and came away with 1st, 3rd, and an Honorable Mention. It was at this point that I felt I had arrived as a photographer. No longer am I an amateur, but I wouldn&#8217;t consider myself &#8220;professional&#8221; yet either.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-4\" src=\"http:\/\/photo.benjamin-m-weilert.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/2015-Photo-Contest-300x111.jpg\" alt=\"2015 Photo Contest\" width=\"300\" height=\"111\" \/><br \/>\nI have been paid for a few of my photos, so by that definition, I am a &#8220;professional&#8221;, but I really hadn&#8217;t taken it seriously as more than just a hobby. Then I joined Fine Art America. Now that I have the ability to sell my photographs and participate in more contests to match my skill against others, I feel like I&#8217;m closer to that &#8220;professional&#8221; status. Sure, it won&#8217;t pay the bills, but I would like to be known as a professional photographer rather than just an amateur. The jump from one to the other is mainly based on confidence, but now I feel I have the talents to back it up.<\/p>\n<p>&#8211; Benjamin M. Weilert\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Greetings! My name is Benjamin M. Weilert and I&#8217;m an amateur photographer. Actually, now I&#8217;d like to consider myself as a professional photographer. This happened slowly, taking pictures over time to refine my craft was quite the fun adventure and now I have quite a portfolio of interesting photographs that are now lining the walls [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[21,30,74],"class_list":["post-6","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-decisions","tag-amateur","tag-contest","tag-professional"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/photo.benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/photo.benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/photo.benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/photo.benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/photo.benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/photo.benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/photo.benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/photo.benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/photo.benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}