This post reviews how the first 3,000 hours of deliberate practice have been spent against the criteria for becoming more creative (as defined by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi) and running an effective photographic apprenticeship (as defined by Graham Greene).

First 2,500 Hours of Deliberate Practice Learning the Art of Photography

This post marks the one quarter point of my 10,000 hour photography apprenticeship, which is an emotionally challenging milestone.  In some ways this seems to have happened very quickly.  Yet I am also very aware that it has taken me nearly 20 months to get this far, and at this rate I will not finish for another five years (60 months).

Objectively, I have achieved the following in the 2,500 hour of work over the last 20 months:

• Pressed the shutter release on my camera tens of thousands of times
• Achieved Licentiateship of the Royal Photographic Society
• Become familiar with the works of over 100 of the most famous photographers
• Studied painting and other forms of visual art in addition to photography
• Written posts about the nature of art, photographic composition, colour theory, etc.
• Moved stylistically from straight photography to a frequently semi-abstract style involving long-exposures, multiple-exposures or intentional camera movement
• I have carried out 5 commercial assignments for a high-end residential builder
• Have had an image accepted into an International Salon.

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First 1,000 Hours of Deliberate Practice Learning the Art of Photography

It’s July 2018 and I’ve now put in 1,000 hours learning photography through deliberate practice, and am consequently ten percent through my 10,000 hour project.

10,000 hours of deliberate practice is often compared to a 5 year industrial apprenticeship.  So after 1,000 hours of graft, I should now, just about, be capable of making the gaffer a cup of tea!

The best tip was from David Boag on 23 January, when he gave a lecture to the Stoke Poges Photographic Club: “To increase creativity; whenever a shot is good enough to take, also take it from two further angles.”  This forces you to think about alternative perspectives and images that can be made from the same subject.  I have been deliberately practicing this every time I go out shooting, and am hopefully on my way to making it a habit.

Technically, I feel comfortable using Capture One for RAW processing and initial processing then passing the image to lightroom for further processing in Photoshop, output to JPEG and/ or social media channels (flickr, facebook, instagram), and long term storage.  See: “Post Processing Workflow Revision“.

The biggest change for me is that I have started to understand photographic styles and some of the photographers associated with them, as described in my post “First Notes on the History of Photography as an Art Form.”  In general, I am taking a more informed view on my visits to galleries and exhibitions.  Clearly though, still a long way to go.

If you have any comments on this post, please post them below.

To see more posts on other photographic topics, or to follow my learning progress, please like or follow me on the social media channel of your choice to the right.

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