This is the album cover of Sean Combs, or P. Diddy, Puff Daddy, or whatever name you know him by. He was a musician and producer, who is in a lot of trouble these days.
I took this photo.
I was on holiday in Paris at the Pompidou Centre with my wife, saw a bunch of lovely shapes and colours, and thought, “That will make a really good photo.” So I clicked it, and I never thought about it until Sony Music started hounding me over and over again, saying that they wanted it for the cover of that album.
They then paid me for that photo. Not a lot, because I had to spend a lot to recreate it and make it look good enough for an album cover, and I didn’t even have the original anymore.
Based on this, could you say I was a professional photographer? I don’t think actual professional photographers would feel that way. I think they would say that I did something on the side, someone gave me some money for it at one stage, and then I never did anything like this ever again. I mean, if I was a professional and I got this album cover, I think I also would have gone to a P Diddy party. Luckily for me, I never actually went to one of those, otherwise I might be in trouble with the police now.
The point is, you can get paid for something but it doesn’t actually mean that you’re a professional in that field. The reason I bring this up is that many people seem confused about the concept of professionalism in cricket.
They’re like, “Well, wait a minute. People got paid before. There must’ve been professionalism.”
No.
There was just occasionally money. In cricket, professionalism has taken a very long time to take hold.
We can go back through the full history of cricket, or as near it as possible.
