I am not talented

“It’s not necessarily the amount of time you spend at practice that counts, it’s what you put into the practice” – Eric Lindos

I notice on occasions when I show my images to someone, their immediate response is “Ming, you are so talented”. While I find their comment flattering, I also find it amusing when someone view me as having some innate talent, and I know it couldn’t be furthest from the truth. While we may have proclivity towards certain things or activities, my experience in photography has taught me simply sitting on my hands waiting for talent to show up will not get me through the hurdles. Much like anything else in life, I need to put in the hard work to make progress, but the work cannot be repetitions with no purpose, it is only with doing the quality work can one push forth progress.

I have been reading Anders Ericsson’s book “Peak: secrets from the new science of expertise”, and I couldn’t agree more with the theory he puts forth by looking back at my experience with photography. Ericsson takes deliberate practice one step further, investigating how expertise is developed. He finds that expert performance is not just the result of innate talent, instead one becomes exceptional through intentional, effective, and consistent practice, summing 10,000 or more hours of practice. He argues the secret to excellence is deliberate practice and is acquired through structured training and expert feedback. Feedback is really a crucial element here, think about learning to drive a car without someone beside you explaining what to do, or practicing tennis with an ineffective serving technique, over and over. Feedback and expert coaching are required to develop the right kind of revision and ensure the skill being practiced is worth making permanent.

Then there is the myth being put forth by putting in 10,000 hours of practice, you will be guaranteed to be expert in the field. Looking back at how I started my photography journey, there were many years of meandering around despite making many images and photographing regularly. There was a long period when I was proficient with my basic technical skills but was not making any progress in terms of artistry. Granted, photography, as in any other art form is highly subjective, unlike playing golf with which you can measure your handicap to chart your progress, it is not as easy to measure progress with photography. One can argue by entering photography competitions and hopefully by winning awards, that will prove one is making forward progress. While winning awards may well be seen as an effective measure, I am not one of those who is completely convinced. Nevertheless, I can always tell when I am making some improvement or breakthroughs, and coincidentally those are periods when instead of photographing aimlessly, I am either working with good instructors to further my skills or focusing on personal projects that force me to dig deep and make focused effort in certain areas.

Reflecting on those experience, I have come up with a few ideas as to what constitute purposeful practice that may help propel us forward.

Talent is not enough. Practice is the difference between good and great. While talent certainly helps, there are many examples to draw on of people who work hard to get better at what they do. Spanish violinist, Pablo Sarasate, for example, practiced for fourteen hours a day, for 37 years and talks about how people now talk about him as a genius.

Expert performance is hard work and requires repeated actions. Sustained, repeated practice is needed to get better at what you do. Repeated practice is required to develop automaticity, helping support the learning of more cognitive demanding tasks. Learning a concept requires repeated exposure. To encourage long term storage, it is important to introduce information gradually, through repeated, timed intervals, thus when some processes are more automatic, there is more room to focus on the next task or step. I am aware when I photograph regularly, I no longer focus on the technical aspects of the craft. My focus can be placed primarily on my composition and my emotional response when my camera becomes an extension of myself.

Keeping focus and breaking a task into manageable parts. Remember that saying ‘quality over quantity’. Repeated opportunities to practice skills in short, sharp bursts at regular intervals is better than working at something all day with your mind only half focused on the skill. Opportunities to practice, in short sharp durations is an effective way to move concepts from working to long term memory and taking breaks can help reinvigorate energy levels. It is difficult to sustain concerted effort for long periods of time, thus repeated practice is essential. I love running, and I notice whenever I keep focus on my strides, instead of letting my mind wander, I will make better time. The same goes for my photography outings, instead of shooting aimlessly for long hours, I usually come away with better images spending a lot less time out in the field when I make focused effort in areas that I need to work on.

Goal setting and perseverance is key. Goal setting becomes a powerful motivator when teamed with practice. Perseverance to continue getting better is important. We like to do things we can master and as we practice, we get better, setting bigger goals and feeling better about our accomplishments. Motivation is powerful. When I notice the better the images I take, the more I want to photograph and the better my images will get. Devoted time to gradually increasing levels of challenge is important and key for continued improvement.

Timely feedback is crucial. Remembering that ‘practice makes permanent’, what you practice matters. Timely, immediate feedback from a trusted source is important - knowing what you are doing and why, then providing an opportunity to practice the skill again. Simple, descriptive feedback is important. You can’t focus on everything as once and too much feedback can cause confusion and be disheartening. Last year I was lucky to have my mentor Bruce tutoring me on my photo editing skills over the internet. I submitted images to him prior to our meetings, and we went over my edits. Bruce would show me my mistakes and tell me what areas I could improve on. After each of our mentoring session, he would send me an email summarizing what we accomplished and gave me assignments to work on before the next meeting. I found his instruction and feedback to be of enormous value, and I could see substantial improvement with my editing skills after I finished our mentoring sessions. It is important to find someone with whom you can trust and have your best interest in mind, and they need to feel uninhibited in giving you honest feedbacks. I doubt I would have made such substantial progress in a short period of time if I didn’t have Bruce’s help.

My experience with photography tells me my great satisfaction and pleasure come from exercising my abilities, and I feel a tremendous sense of accomplishment from pushing myself to develop new skills. It is as if I am getting constant stimulation where there are always new challenges and opportunities. I believe we all have control of our abilities, and we are not held hostage by some antiquated idea of natural talent.