In his book Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell stated that to be great one has to put in 10,000 hours of practice. There is actually some scientific research behind this that goes a bit further. The research shows that greatness comes from accumulating “deliberate practice”. You need to practice with specific, measurable goals and on a regular basis. You also need to review your practice to see if you met your goals. If you walk around simply clicking the shutter without any specific goals in mind you are wasting your time. You cannot just keep shooting to get better; you need to shoot with intention.

What I did not realize is that with photography you need to shoot first in order to discover your intention or your photographic vision. I did not realize it until I took a ton of shots at a triathlon recently. As I was reviewing the shots I found that I was taking a photojournalistic approach to the race as opposed to trying to catch great moments. I started with the preparation in the transition area and followed the racers through the different phases of the race. I also was most fascinated by the determination, joy, and introspection apparent on the faces of the participants. I did not consciously make this my goal but in looking at the images it is easily a recurring theme in the images.

What I believe is the most neglected and elusive element of good photography is composition. There are easily thousand of photoshop tutorials and tons of information on lighting, but not a lot of good stuff on composition. I recently finished Michael Freeman’s The Photographer’s Eye. Great book on composition and design for photography. How do you have a specific goal to practice composition? I think that going through a good book or resource on composition and focusing on one element at a time may be a good way to structure practice. The elements and principles of design as outlined by Freeman in The Photographer’s Eye seem as good a place as any. Another may be to take David duChemin’s TEN or TEN more and work through one of those principles for a few sessions and see what comes of it.

The feedback part is a little tricky. You can of course compare your work to the concept and see where you fell short. The best feedback will probably come from external sources. The internet is a great tool but unless you can find credible folks to actually critique your work it may do more harm than good.

So the next race I shoot I will take that with me and hopefully have a lot more keepers.

I didn’t. It was at home in my other camera bag.

So. I have my 28 – 70mm f3.5-4.5, my flash and my wits. I almost gave up. I decided to try somehting. I put my flash in wireless IR mode (no sync cable or radio triggers either) put on my stofen, attached an index card, and set the flash on the floor in front of Joel. I then started to play. In hindsight I should have upped my ISO to about 400 or 800, but I have a fear of noise (I don’t own Noise Ninja or even Photoshop for that matter). I only took a few shots as I was not really satisfied with the results from the back of my LCD.

f4.5, ISO 200, 1/100, 60mm

Once I got home and on the computer, I was able to salvage this in Lightroom. I am actually pretty happy with it.

Lessons Learned:

1. Don’t be afraid of noise from high ISO settings. Try it out before ditching the idea.
2. Make sure you have all the gear you want to have
3. Keep all decent exposures until you have at least reviewed them on the computer. The LCD can be misleading.

1. Consistent & deliberate. Now when I get a great image it is usually rare. Most often it is accidental. Often I don’t even have a vision in my mind I am just hoping to get the exposure right and maybe apply the rule of thirds. Once I can get a great image on purpose and without 100 bad images along with it, I will be on my way.

2. Emotional impact. Does the picture make you feel something? How powerful is it? Does it take you somewhere you are not exactly comfortable being? Your kids school photos or maybe your wedding photos will have emotional impact for you. They may not have impact for me which leads me to…

3. Cross contextual. If I can look at your wedding photos and feel that impact, the image is cross contextual. When I look at the work of Avendon or Ansel Adams I feel that. The photos are powerful even though I have no direct attachment to the people or places in the images.

As I unpack “frustrated artisan”, my goal is to remember where I am on my photographic journey and keep myself motivated to keep improving.

Now stop reading this and go shoot something. That’s where I am going.

To sum up what Chase said:
1 – Anyone can publish now that the internet is in more and more places
2 – If you are at all creative do the stuff that brings you life and cool things will happen. You will gain and audience.
3 – You need to find a way to sustain yourself (make a living) while you create the cool stuff.

Chase sums this up with the mantra “create-share-sustain.”

With that said here’s my issues with Chase’s talk.

The first point is not news. Blogs and self publishing have been around for a while. The advent of tools like GarageBand and iTunes means you can cut an album in your basement and sell it all over the world without meeting a single record executive. Similarly you can write and produce your own short film and distribute it online. iMovie and a Podcast. It has been called the democratization of film. This was all the rage a few years ago when I was in grad school. The challenge (as I have found here) is maintaining the discipline to keep publishing and keep working. Arguably if it truly is your passion you should be able to keep publishing fairly easily. (And yes I am checking my passion.) Admittedly the democratization of publishing may have just reached a tipping point because of twitter. I will give Chase that much on this one.

The second point is one that many people instinctively know but have not really internalized. It’s one of those things you always hope is true but rarely see it come to fruition. “If you do what you love, good things will happen.” People believe that we are supposed to suffer through our “9 to 5” jobs and do what we love on the side.

(On the third point) It seems as if we are supposed to somehow feel guilty when our passions line up with our working lives. I disagree. I have spent far too long making good money doing things I cannot stand in environments that drain my spirit. Life is too short to live like this. Granted, I lived in LA and ran into tons of servers with headshots and I wish them the best of luck, but George Clooney and Glenn Close don’t wait tables (at least not anymore). My point is that what Chase refers to as “sustain” should really be a temporary state, until you have enough momentum. You should be able to survive through simply creating and sharing.

A great friend of ours did just this (create-share-sustain) until she had enough momentum to quit her day job and do wedding photography full time (create-share). My wife does what she loves almost every day and is the most fulfilled I have ever seen her. AND it helps pay the bills. Just because somebody will pay good money for something does not make it any less creative, artsy, or cool. It just makes it an occupation instead of a hobby. Being a starving artist is not a function of being an artist.

If people are loving the things that give you life and fuel your spirit, why not monetize it and make a living at it? Why do I have to do other things that subtract from my soul, if the core of my being is being fed and people will compensate me for it? What this says is that society does not value my best contributions. The person I am destined to become is not valued or appreciated. Admittedly it will take time to build that momentum and develop an audience but it’s worth it.

If you need more motivation check out this piece from Doug Menuez about how to have longevity as a pro photography. I think this applies to any creative vocation.

• 
• 
  biking
• 
  building1
• 
  building2
• 
  Post
• 
  Five
• 
  big duck
• 
  big duck2'
• 
  over
• 
  railing
• 
  upstairs

Today was pretty cool. I went downtown and spent some time in the shadow of the HP Pavilion. Very interesting area. Lots of small, run down houses around the river. It is a sharp contrast to the steel and glass of the arena. There are also a host of shiny new buildings scattered in the area. It seems like the area is in the midst of gentrification – or at least was before the economy went south.

I have my workflow down pretty good by now. I actually am not using Photoshop at all. I don’t even own it. Everything is done in Lightroom. This keeps me honest when I’m behind the camera. I think my exposure is getting better as I adjust that a lot less than I used to.

• 
  Speedy
• 
  Roots1
• 
  Roots2
• 
  Sky Peek
• 
  Three Glass
• 
  Leaves Glass
• 
  hydrant1
• 
  hydrant2'
• 
  web?
• 
  Old Style

Day Twelve. Supposedly a milestone? Almost two weeks. I took about 50 shots and came up with these ten. I am getting better in terms of the shot to keeper ratio. Or maybe my standards are getting lower. How do I keep the quality up while taking fewer shots? The mark of a good photographer is being able to reproduce good results at will – not accidentally. I hope that I am moving in that direction.

Looking at these I am slipping. Three Glass and Leaves Glass are out of focus. Not sharp at all. Need to spend some time on the fundamentals.

• 
  Tranquil
• 
  Bold Sky
• 
  Serene 1
• 
  Calero 2
• 
  number5
• 
  number6'
• 
  number7
• 
  number8'
• 
  smooth
• 
  number10
• 
  number11
• 
  Golden hills
• 
  number13
• 
  number14

This is tough. I am having a really hard time making time to take photos. All of these shots are actually from Tuesday, which is day 9 of 100. I kind of took the easy way out and went to Calero Lake about an hour before sunset. I was thinking about it as I was driving home from work and saw what the cloud cover looked like. I did not take any photos on Monday (or Wednesday either).

The way am approaching this is like eating. If you miss a meal you don’t stop eating altogether – you just eat a little more next time and try to get back on schedule. My final result desired from all this is to become a better photographer. Regardless of how many shots I take and post each day I am confident that will happen. I am not adjusting my goal, just committing to not beat myself up about it if I don’t get 10 shots posted each day.

With that said here is what I have learned so far.

• I am getting very familiar with my tripod. I know it better and can deploy it faster than before.
• Lightroom is very slow on my PowerBook G4. I kind of knew that, but trying to render 1:1 previews of 200 shots reminds you very quickly.
• I make my post processing adjustments a lot faster. I selected & processed these shots in less than a half hour. Before it would have taken me easily over an hour as I hemmed and hawed over a certain shot or tried to figure out how to get the effect I had in my minds eye.

• 
  White Sangria
• 
  Big Sax
• 
  Hamid & Parvis
• 
  Frankie 1
• 
  Frankie 2
• 
  drummin'
• 
  Isis & Co.
• 
  strummin'
• 
  smooth
• 
  work it!
• 
  Carol & Parvis
• 
  Hannah

This was a fun day. It was a Jazz Jam at Tessora’s, our favorite wine bar in Campbell. The afternoon began with some white Sangria made by our favorite Sommelier, Hannah. Absolutely perfect for patio jazz on a Sunday afternoon. Frankie, the sax player is absolutely amazing! He can play two saxophones at the same time. He loves to work the crowd. Isis put this thing together and they will be doing it every other Sunday at Tessora’s.

The lighting was a bit problematic as the musicians were under umbrellas, making for a lot of contrast. Once I switched to spot metering things came out okay.

]]> http://www.one9design.com/the-seventh-day/feed/ 1 http://www.one9design.com/day-six/ http://www.one9design.com/day-six/#comments Mon, 01 Jun 2009 03:46:24 +0000 Paul http://www.one9design.com/?p=49

• 
  Peek
• 
  caught smile
• 
  blinds
• 
  drum
• 
  still orange
• 
  still life
• 
  pink shoes

Once again I am a day behind. These pictures were all taken in haste on Saturday. There are only 7 as I could not find 10 that I liked that were different enough. I only took 62 shots. It seems that if I can get up to about 100 or so, finding ten that I actually like is pretty easy. A goal for this whole exercise is to get that ratio down. I’d like to be able to take 25 or 30 shots and get 10 good ones. I am not sure what a good ratio is or even if that is a valuable way to measure myself as a photographer.

We shall see.

• 
  caged crayons
• 
  sidewalk parking
• 
  cart one
• 
  cart two
• 
  orange hoses
• 
  smoking leaf
• 
  bare bark
• 
  public phone
• 
  firehouse light
• 
  who's gum

I know I am a day late but all of these pictures were taken on Friday – I just did not get a chance to process and post.Hopefully I can take another round of shots today and process and post later tonight.

I took a little photo walk in my neighborhood and made good use of my macro lens. Lots of trash. Suburbia always intrigues me as it does not have the cool factor of the urban setting or the comforting feeling of the country. Everything seems out of place. So many of these shots seem to be of things that don’t belong where they are yet that’s we continue to find them.