Ever heard of the 10,000 hour rule? The theory is that the thing that sets an expert apart from a novice is not necessarily innate talent, but rather 10,000 hours of practice. That’s quite a long time. If you work 8 hours a day, five days a week for a year (no vacation or public holidays), you accrue just over 2000 hours a year.
In an earlier post titled "Habit forming" I discussed the process of habit forming. In this post I described a study that shows a new habit can take over 250 days to become cemented as a habit. I suppose a habit practiced for for over 10,000 hours would then be considered an expert skill?!
I used to take photos every day of my life. I usually tried to spend at least an hour a day with my eye glued to the view finder, or more often studying the screen on the back of my trusty Canon 50D. If you’d like to see what I was photographing take a look at my flickr photostream. There are recurring themes - flowers, spiders and birds feature a lot, interspersed with wildlife and an occasional landscape.
By a rough calculation, I think I’m between two-thirds and three-quarters of the way to becoming a photography expert. I think some of my work is good. I have entered and won a few local photography competitions and some of my photos are used by a commercial postcard company (spressit.com).
When I left Kenya, my daily photography stopped. I guess it was a combination of factors - change in environment, having the photographic gear scattered between boxes, a different rhythm and pace to my life back in South Africa. Mostly I think it was a lack of motivation and inspiration. In Kenya I was surrounded by wild Africa - birds, insects, spiders, cool trees and landscapes. In Johannesburg I was confronted by a different kind of jungle - a concrete one!
Today I am starting again, on the photography that is! The picture below was the result of a 15 min kick-start ad hoc photography session. Just before I left Kenya I upgraded to a Canon 7D. I used this camera with my Lensbaby Composer and shot a total of 24 shots. I have called the abstract image “Tools, Tones and Textures”.
I realize that while Johannesburg is not exactly wild, there are still loads of places and spaces to photograph. I have resolved to start taking more photos again (I’m so close to being an expert after all ;-). I have also resolved, bearing in mind the 10,000 hour rule, not to be so hard on myself in my new job where certain functions and processes seem so hard - I am after all only a novice where these are concerned, and like anything in life - practice WILL make perfect!
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