Tag: Learning

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Indoor Time

Very distorted window

Most of us are having to adjust to rather extreme temporary measures in our daily lives. Our focus has become on indoor time.I won’t say it is a “new normal” because I hate that phrase and it is tossed around too easily.

This has caused most of us to spend way more time indoors than we are used to and are comfortable with. As photographers, we are accustomed to being out shooting a lot. So what are you doing with your new indoor time? I’ll give you a brief rundown of some of what I am doing.

Filing

I hate to admit it, but I was thousands of images behind in sorting and tagging and grading. I have spent MANY hours in Lightroom recently trying to get caught up. I’m not there yet, but I have dealt with thousands of images. That is tiring.

But it also can be rewarding. I have run across a lot of images I had mostly forgotten about. It makes me feel good to find these pockets of images I really like. It encourages me that maybe I have a history of making decent images. Plus, they remind me of good times and great experiences I have had.

Do I really need to do all this detailed filing? Probably not. But it is critically important (to me) to go through the sorting and filtering process to narrow them down to the set of images I am proud to show to anyone. For me, this takes several rounds of serious evaluation and making hard choices. It is very difficult for me to “let go” of images I really like that don’t make the cut.

Post-processing

Along with filing comes post-processing. This seems like a never-ending struggle. Trying to catch up on thousands of images that have not been processed yet brings with it the opportunity to edit many of them.

I am constantly learning new techniques for processing in Lightroom and Photoshop. So this is a great opportunity for me not only to catch up, but to practice some new methods and get more efficient. And my values and vision seems to evolve all the time.

I make it harder on myself because I am often not content to process an image and have done with it for all time. No, every time I take a new look at many of my images I have a different inspiration about what to do with a few of them.

So between trying to catch up on a backlog of lots of images and re-processing many that I see differently now, I have a lot of work. Luckily I enjoy the post-processing in the computer. I view it as one of the creative parts of photography. But it is very time consuming.

Backup

Yes, I am a computer nerd. Well, I used to be. Now the computer is just a tool. I no longer have an intimate relationship with them. But as I have written in the past, I am fanatical about backup. This has been an opportunity to review my system and make some changes.

I have levels and levels of backup. One of the last levels is rotating storage offsite (where they’re then backed up again. ☺ ). My offsite disks have been too small for a while to hold all of my main catalog. I had to restrict them to the “most important” images. That has been uncomfortable. It was a chink in the armor. So I took this opportunity to replace the offsite storage with larger disks. Now I can backup everything in my main catalog to each of them.

WD makes some great little portable disk drives. This MyPassport drive seems very reliable and pretty fast. And the physical size is amazing for 5 Terabytes of storage. I do not receive any benefit from referring this. I included an Amazon link, but, honestly, I would recommend finding another vendor.

Warning, when you attach a 5 T disk to your system don’t think you are going to just copy your files to it and be done in a few minutes. If your computer can transfer data to the backup at a rate of 100MBytes/sec, it will take a few days to do the initial copy. Subsequent updates only take minutes, because they typically only affect a few GBytes. There is 3 orders of magnitude between a GByte and a TByte.

Study and read

For an introvert like me, free time means reading or study time.

One of the benefits of the popularity of photography is that there is limitless information available, online and in books. You remember those things printed on paper, don’t you?

Ah, but that glut of information brings other problems. Who do you trust? How to separate the useful from the useless? There is a lot of bad or useless information out there. You can learn good information from a bad example, but I don’t recommend it unless that is the only alternative.

I admit to being rather jaded. I am technical and creative and very experienced. It is hard for me to find someone I trust to give me good information. I don’t want to come across as arrogant. This is something that happens with lots of experience in a field.

Two instructors I can recommend who consistently do great training are Dave Cross and Ben Willmore. They are fantastically deep in their knowledge of the tools and are good communicators. Plus, they mostly teach how to use and understand the tools, not “cookbook” methods for copying the results of someone else.

So, in the spirit of good disclosure, I have been spending a lot of time on CreativeLive, KelbyIOne, The Nature Photography Network, John Paul Camponigro’s web site, and B&H’s archive of videos.

I have also been reading books for inspiration, such as Creative Black & White, by Harold Davis, and More Than A Rock, by Guy Tal.

Study your equipment

I believe intimate knowledge of your equipment pays off. If you can’t use your tools rapidly and with little thought they will get in your way rather than help you be creative. This is an opportunity to spend time practicing with your camera.

I moved to a mirrorless body about a year ago. I confess that I have struggled with it some. It is not as convenient and user friendly as a larger and more mature DSLR. I am comfortable using it for normal day to day shooting situations, but I could not pass the blindfold test like I could with previous bodies. That is, I could not reliably set the camera up for a particular shooting situation blindfolded (or in the dark).

I love the quality of the images from the mirrorless camera, but I am having to spend extra time making it natural and intuitive to use. I am working on that as part of my down time.

Get out and shoot

I may make some people mad for saying this, but I am out shooting almost every day. Our officials here kindly allow us to be out walking, biking, etc. I take advantage of it to wander with my camera. I try to get out walking 2-4 miles a day. It is very good for me health-wise and for my sanity. Plus I like to practice shooting every day. Sometimes I even get a decent image.

I also occasionally jump in the car and drive out of town for some photos. For instance, we had an unusually large snow last week (as I am writing this). I was out all afternoon shooting. It was great and very refreshing! For the sticklers, I was never within 20 feet of another person. But then, I do not worry about Covid and I am not concerned about catching it when I am out and about. I refuse to be paralyzed by fear.

Time well spent

These are some of the things I am doing in my “confinement”. I hope I will look back on it as time well spent. A chance to regroup, catch up on some things, refresh and recharge. I hope you are able to make productive use of your time indoors, too.

Let me know how you are doing. I would love to hear from you. Sign up to receive notifications. Please visit my gallery site and let me know what you think.

I hope you are well and I’m glad you’re reading! Even if it is because you are bored. 🙂

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Nature vs. Nurture

It’s a long-standing debate and it has been studied for a long time. Can we do the things we do because it is our natural ability (nature) or is it things we have learned (nurture)? The nature vs. nurture question comes up with anyone who sets out to call himself an artist.

Would you expect to sit down at drums, like in this image, pick up the sticks, and be a master immediately? Of course not. If you take lessons and practice for a long time will you become a famous drummer? Probably not. You may be a good one, but not necessarily great.

So what should natural ability do for us? I think it makes it easier for some people to learn to do some things. We say they “take to” things naturally. Whether it is playing tennis, or doing math, or playing the drums, there is no doubt that it is less of a struggle for some. Note, though, that it is “less” of a struggle. It’s still a struggle. I’ve never met anyone with natural talent who did not have to also work very hard to excel.

On the nurture side, should we expect that anyone can master anything if they are determined enough? Yes, but. Sorry to break it to you, but you probably can’t become a world class ballerina just because you practice enough. Most people can learn to be good at almost anything if they apply themselves diligently. Some things take certain inherent physical characteristics that cannot be learned. E.g., don’t expect to be the next Michael Jackson unless you are about 7 feet tall.

If I decide I want to play tennis well, I can take lessons and practice hard. I might get to the point where I can beat most of the people in my area, but I won’t be competing at Wimbledon. There is a huge gap between good and great.

10,000 Hours

It is often quoted that it takes at least 10,000 hours of practice to master something. That may be correct, but what does it mean? That study is documenting that it takes those 10,000 hours of great practice to get to the level of a Tiger Woods in golf or a Yo-Yo Ma on the cello.

The number gets thrown around a lot to prove how hard it is to learn things, but it is not as daunting as that. Most of us rightly get discouraged at he prospect of taking 10,000 hours to get good at something, so we don’t do it. Remember, though, that this is the investment to get to be the best in the world. Other studies, and common sense. show that it takes a much lower level of investment to get to proficiency or a level of expertise. Common numbers I hear are 20 to 40 hours.

Try it yourself. Pick out something you think you are interested in but know nothing about. Take knife throwing as a weird example. Get a simple throwing knife at your local sporting goods store, watch some You-tube videos and practice for 40 hours. Good practice where you evaluate your mistakes and learn to correct them. You will probably be the most expert knife thrower in your area.

Conclusion

I asked the question of nature vs. nurture in the context of an artist. Do you have to have natural talent or else you should give up? If you have natural talent do you need training?

What I have observed is that “making it” – whatever that means to you – takes work. Lots of work. If you have a natural talent you may get there with less pain. If it takes pain, you will probably learn more deeply because of it. Either way you have to put in the work. If you want to be an artist, put in the time. Artists don’t have to suffer, but they do have to work long and hard at their craft.

So, nature or nurture? For me, it’s a don’t care. If you put in the time and keep developing yourself you will not need to ask the question. Some luck doesn’t hurt, too.

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Fail With Style

Failing. We hate the thought of it. We often don’t do new creative things because we’re afraid of failing.

If you’re going to be a creative, though, failure can’t be avoided. As a matter of fact, it shouldn’t entirely be avoided. When you try something new or when you want to develop a new technique, you’re not likely to get it “right” the first time. You fail. But in that fail you learn something. The next time you still may fail, but maybe now you can see the beginning of a new direction you wanted to explore. Several failures may be required to get all the bad ideas out and determine what you really wanted to do. That’s OK.

You don’t, generally, need to share all of your failures with your audience. I don’t agree with the philosophy of throwing everything you do out on social media for comment. Maybe that works for some people, but I am a more private person. You only see my images that I want to share.

That could be a small set of them! I will usually show less than 10% of the images I take. And when I am experimenting on new abstract techniques, you may see much less than that. So maybe overall only about 1-5% of my images are for public viewing.

That huge percentage of ones I’m sitting on won’t all be failures. Many may be variations of an image that don’t make the grade. But there are also some spectacular failures. Sometimes I have to say “what was I thinking?” Sometimes I have to say “that didn’t work and I don’t think it ever will”. But sometimes there’s the “that’s not very good, but I like the idea. I will look for opportunities to explore that space more.” Those are wins, not failures. They’re exciting; they lead me in a new direction.

Michael Jordan said “I can accept failure, but I can’t accept not trying.” Good words. Failure hurts and it may be embarrassing. The little voice in us that tries to keep us out of trouble tells us to never do that again. But if you don’t take the chance of failing, you will never advance your skill or do anything new. I believe you cannot advance as an artist unless you are willing to accept failure.

So expect failure. You can’t avoid it. Failure can be a sign that you are growing. Fail big; fail little; but pick yourself up, learn what you can from it, and start again even more motivated to create things that please you. Because you are the only audience that really matters.