According to Ken Rockwell, via the first result of a Google search, the definition of a professional photographer is someone:
.. who earns 100% of his income from photography. This is the definition required for entrance into the secret Nikon and Canon factory support organizations. People who earn less than 50% of their income from photography are amateurs.
I am not a professional by that standard, but I had to look because I was curious if viewership mattered. That came after Google notified me that another one of my photos had been viewed over one million times via the exciting subject line of “A lot of people are seeing your photo on Google Maps!“
I’m sure there are some amazing photographers that sell their works in stores that have been seen by tens of thousands of people, and yet my quick shot of a local Qdoba has somehow been viewed by that many? That’s about 25% of the population of the greater Denver metro area.
I’ve long thought that these mails and such numbers are wrong, but no way to prove it. There certainly isn’t one million actual humans that interested in the local Qdoba. That means there is likely a lot of automated scraping of images or applications that load it for other purposes. I’m sure there is a blog out there explaining this but I think I would rather enjoy the notion that my photography is just that awesome.
[Update: As I suspected, something else going on. Gillis explains why the numbers are high: “Comes down to the manager of the Google maps business listing. Each “view” of a business counts as a image view if you’re one of the top 6 images for the business. Whereas if you’re ‘below the fold’ views only come if folks scroll down to your pic“. He goes on to say “Oh yeah, you’re the main image for the business. So everytime someone tries to navigate there manually, you get a view.” So basically, that manager owes me free queso and chips.