The Importance of Growth Beyond the Individual Image
In the world of photography, the focus often centers on the singular image, the standalone photograph. Yet, discussions about the book, the gallery wall, the series, and the editorial are noticeably absent. While striking individual images are encouraged, the power of a series and narrative, guiding the viewer through a cohesive story, is seldom explored. Combining images, strengthening them collectively, and growing beyond the individual is a transformative journey.
The Price of Knowledge: To Pay or Not to Pay for Online Courses?
The majority of people who are selling you a course aren't doing it out of your best interest. They are selling you their course to make money, not to further your career. Don't get me wrong; there might be some good information in that same course. But 90% of any course online can be obtained for free on the internet. YouTube, OpenCourseWare, Khan Academy, Coursera, Gutenberg, Google Books, to name a few. So why would you buy one?
The Power of Creative Exploration
Consistency, repetition, limitations, or limited creative exploration creates genius. Hear me out on this one. Think about great artists and writers. Their limitations are the medium they use for expression. Their consistency is the genre or style in which they use their medium of choice. Then consistently; practising that particular medium. Getting better, while also pushing that medium and exploring it within their style. That is the fine line you have to walk to create masterpieces, and where true genius comes from.
I grow up without knowing I had dyslexia
I’m 36 at the time of this writing. I started reading books in my mid 20’s. I only started writing and learning to write once I created this blog. It’s a hard thing to bring into into light because I don’t want to be known for it, or pitied. I have dyslexia and auditory processing disorder, and I only found this out in my 30s. All this time I have been struggling and not even comprehend or understood that I'm different. I thought I was just dumb, slow or stupid but I'm not. Here is my story about what it’s like to grow up with dyslexia and auditory processing disorder without even knowing it.
Schooling and education
We often confuse the difference between, schooling and education and one is not necessarily the same as the other. I went to school, I went to university. I have a bachelors degree and an honors degree. What I studied was graphic design, I don't use my degree at all. I'm a studio photographer and writer. All I got out of university what very expensive schooling.
Deliberate practice
After reading the book 'So good they can’t ignore you' by Cal Newport I found that I personally have plateaued in my photography practice. I’m too comfortable, I find my composition natural and it comes to me like second nature when framing an image inside the viewfinder. After reading Newport’s book I found that I was no longer practising in the sense of training, or stretching my creative mussels. Cal Newport coined the phrase 'deliberate practice', which is exactly what I need to do.
Being original isn't easy
Quantity always trumps quality. In a book called Art of fear by David Bayles & Ted Orland. They write about an experiment. A ceramics teacher divided a class into two groups. One group would be graded on quantity and the other group on quality. The ones being graded on "quality" produced only one pot. While the "quantity" group was churning out