What does it mean to be a professional photographer?

Question

What does it mean to be a professional photographer?

Answer 1

to be a photographer for your profession

Answer 2

To be considered professional in anything from photography to sports is to be earning money for you work. If you do good work and sell your work for weddings, to a magazine as an on staff or independent staffer or even do pictures for art and earn money for your work then consider yourself a professional.

Thats societies definition but if you have a desire to show life in a new way and you live and work to that end, just as any other artist you can go on sometimes for years before being discovered, yet you work and live for that end you are in any artists opinion a professional. It's a matter of how one interprets "professional" and if you believe in yourself.