Well, many pros would argue first and foremost that it's innate talent backed up by years of study and hard work. Photographs that, I contend, will rival what you see on magazine covers and calendars. Look, I wouldn't be saying this about any of the arts in which talent is obviously the first requisite ingredient. Let's take painting, for instance. Most of us could paint ten hours a day for the rest of our lives and never come up with a canvas worth hanging anywhere but in front of a dartboard.
Good painting is . . .
But don't get me wrong. Nor am I attempting to diminish the loveliness of some photographs or the power of others. Of course we do. It's the reason why we ooh and ahh in art museums, why we pull over at the same places to view landscapes, why when we walk into one another's houses we admire the way things look. The problem is that almost all of us stopped trying to draw or sculpt or carve or write anything beautiful when we got out of school.