A photographer is one who does photography. Photography is writing with light. The bar is set pretty low for being a real photographer, you pick up any camera, release the shutter and congratulations, you are a real photographer. It is a binary thing, make an image or two and you are a photographer, at least for the time you are making images.
A professional photographer makes enough money from photography to call it a living. An amateur photographer does it for the love of doing it.
A good photographer can control the camera and get a reasonable number of images people perceive as “nice”, “edgy”, “surreal”, “awesome”, whatever. A bad photographer gets fewer images that people find attractive, or that come out as the photographer intended. A really bad photographer makes the front page here — many/most of those have posted on Facebook with an account or watermark indicating they may be in business as a photographer.
I have the view that it would not be wise to take driving lessons from someone who can not drive the kind of vehicle they are providing lessons for. Following that logic, why would you pay any attention to a critique or instruction from someone who is not showing their work?
