Perhaps instead of "Bad," it could be "Amateur."

In one sense, an Amateur Photographer could be defined as a photographer whose equipment does not eclipse the price of his or her car, and sometimes their house.

As it happens, pros amass equipment through their career, if they are actual photographers who have studios. Three or four camera systems; two, three, four different studio strobe systems, hot light systems, LED systems, Fluorescent Systems, grip equipment, power distribution, battery operated strobes (not speedlights, 3,000+ watt-seconds on battery with real heads)... the list goes on and on.

If the equipment does not exist, a pro builds it. I am finishing the second version of my daylight control system right now. The images below are lit only by desert sun on a cloudless day at around 2 p.m. All shot on my built to purpose Daylight Stage with the first version of my Daylight Controls.

These are only some of the reasons why a pro can feel comfortable in shooting 50 pictures, and in doing so, outshoot an amateur shooting 5,000. In my actual experience as an olde curmudgeon, it is more like, give the pro 20 shots, and the amateur 12,000 shots. It is a question of needing to shoot something and knowing how to shoot it without a millisecond of guesswork.

Amateurs can plug away forever while the pro finishes quickly and leaves. Time is money. It is painful to see this in real time. It is far more painful to have to photo edit all those amateur frames. I've been there. 65,000+ frames, fewer than 30 photographs in that massive bunch. It was 29 photographs, and for the final, 30th image, my apologies to Photoshop disbelievers, I had to resort to Photoshop, melding pieces of 3 or 4 images into a decent final image. There were more than 64,971 awful attempts at shooting a photograph. They were just snapshots or worse, incompetent snapshots. Of professional models, by the way with provided makeup and hair, often provided with pre lit scenes. It was a cakewalk, but the "photographers" (chosen from self produced submitted video tapes/DVD demos, not from professional credentials) were just not up to it.

Apologies for the rant...