Need to control for the correlation of financial privledge and experience. Its a huge leap to conclude "showing great passion" for something is equivalent to t

Need to control for the correlation of financial privledge and experience. Its a huge leap to conclude "showing great passion" for something is equivalent to talent. I would say in photography, the industry is supported by two main business models: (1) supporting ad-driven media; and (2) dentist-level dilletante hobbyists. The actual scale of (3) "true artists" as in art-gallery-collector level is staggeringly small. However, it is the work of (3) that really drives (1) and (2). Relatedly, it's a very difficult leap to correlate the various composites of "accomplished" with skill or underlying quality. Its not at all difficult to gain large followers on modern media platforms for reasons not at all relying on "quality". Asymetric access to information will almost always trump "talent" whatever that is when it comes to media-driven distribution networks. It doesn't matter if it is "writing" or "reportage (photography)", if you have information that is not widely available otherwise people will 'like' it, 'follow it' or 'pay' for it. This is a simple cost-benefit analysis by the consumer (its easier and cheaper to consume the experience via media than by actual-real-world means). It says nothing really of the skill underlying the product...the talent of the "writing" or the quality of the "photography" can be quite incidental to the consumer who lacks the relevant choices (this is the asymetric information distribution at play). This is why for the most part, journalists and pj's are not considered part of the artistic pantheon despite their widespread popularity...until they cross over using other formats (eg long-form/anthologies, published works, gallery exibitions etc). The point being that weath and asymmetric information are higly correlated, emprically. Wealth and artisinal-skill or artistic talent, not obviously, but in any even much more loosely, so.