Texas commercial photographer Kirk Tuck’s The Visual Science Lab is one of the better snap-salesman-waxes-philosophical blogs, usually well worth a read. Last month, though, he posted a screed that perpetuates a beloved but, I think, wholly bogus myth: that photography is a kind of athletic knack, and that you’ll get better at it if you practice every day.
Tuck, an avid swimmer, dutifully notes the hours and hours that competitive swimmers train, then opines:
…many photographers don’t get that constant practice is really required to perform photography well… I think photography is every bit as demanding as competitive swimming but in a different way.
And, in the comments, the fanboys went wild with admiration. Photography buffs generally do, for anything that smacks of a clear-cut prescription: Do X and you’ll get Y. Besides, it’s such a commonsense-sounding notion, one so full of homespun virtue: Practice makes perfect.
Or does it?
Tuck may have his swimmers, but I recall an anecdote from 1986 about piano virtuoso Vladimir Horowitz, who — at the age of 83 — had just performed a brilliantly successful recital in Moscow. Asked by a reporter how many hours a day he had practiced for his triumph, Horowitz is said to have replied: “Practice? Oh, I did that when I was young.”
Of course, few of us are photo-Horowitzes… but on the other hand photography isn’t nearly as physical as piano-playing, let alone swimming. Yeah, facile gear-handling may help you get more decent shots in genres such as street, sports, or wildlife — but it isn’t necessarily going to make any one of those shots any better. On a strict qualitative level, the final photograph doesn’t look any different whether you slicked into the right settings instantly, or bumbled around for an hour first.
But isn’t it safe to say that, even if it doesn’t help, at least practice does’t hurt? Even of that I’m not so sure, and again it’s because of Tuck’s post.
Tuck closed with a numbered list of exercises (and if there’s one thing the fanboys love more than a clear-cut prescription, it’s a numbered list of them.) In all honesty, a lot of them are rather good. But then there’s that dear old chestnut: “Like eating, breathing and swimming, do it everyday.”
He meant “every day,” but hey, he’s not a professional writer. And at the time I read his post, I wasn’t feeling picky; in fact, I was feeling a little desperate, and in the mood to try something that might give me the illusion of Making Progress in My Personal Work. So I decided to jump in the pool and make a picture every day.
The first day, August 1, I let it go until evening. Then I decided to make a picture of something I had noticed many times before, the pattern of shadows that the streetlight outside makes on my bedroom wall. I figured out how to shoot it, set up a camera and tripod, and clicked off a few frames. It was kind of fun.
The second evening I had been using my iPad, and decided to make a photo about that. Again, I figured out what to do, set up gear, and did it. Check.
The third evening, though, it hit me like a ton of Steinways that my two days’ worth of pictures were bupkis. They were mildly decorative little things, but completely trivial. I had just been going through the motions for the sake of going through them.
By practicing, all I was training myself to do was make photographs I didn’t care about.
Did I really want to do that? I didn’t. So I stopped.
My two days on the Tuck training regimen weren’t a complete waste of time, though. At least the experience clarified for me that the only thing I really like about photography is that it’s a way to make pictures that mean something to me.
Practicing how NOT to do that? No, thanks… I’m with Horowitz on this one.