Professional photography is a lot like consulting. The differences are that you can't hid bad photography like you can hide bad code, and once you're established, you can charge higher rates than you can as a software consultant.

(I'm already able to charge a higher rate for photography than I am for software development, and I have 17 years in the industry, most of wasted because of the fact that most code is crap, and most management aren't intelligent enough to realize that hero developers are incompetent.)