Ten Thousand Hours Photography

10,000 Hours Deliberate Practice Learning the Art of Photography

Spring 2021

Studying photography Spring 2021 10,000 hours deliberate practice apprenticeship ten thousand hours mastery

Coronavirus lockdown easing, but most images still shot locally. Reached the 5,000 hour milestone in my project: 10,000 hours of deliberate practice learning the art of photography.

Click on the image above to go straight to the images on Flickr, or below to see the full post.

Woodland Photography – RPS Associate Panel

Lots of time spent trying to construct a potential Associate panel (A Panel) for submission to the Royal Photographic Society (RPS) for the next level of distinction (current level is Licentiate, see “My Successful LRPS Resubmission“). I was interested in the patterns at the edge of the woodland, as exemplified by the following image:

Studying photography Spring 2021
Jackson Pollock’s Arboretum – this is really what my potential RPS A panel is all about.

Using images of “The Trees of Stoke Common” the first draft of a potential A panel was created on 10th March.

Theme considered good but poor tonal consistency and aspect ratios all over the place.

Image 3 too dark.

Image 8, OK but doesn’t work with 7&9 which are shot from a different angle and just aren’t up to the required level, as aren’t 11 & 15.

Snow in early April provided the opportunity for some potentially interesting additions.

Generally considered to be a backward step by Vic Attfield, who like the previous version, apart from the 3 being too dark.

Central image not up to Associate level as isn’t 15. Overall the processing was “too heavy handed.”

“Alternative” version: image 7 & 9 are not up to Associate level and add little to the overall panel.

April Snow – Stoke Common

Dorset Seascapes

Clavell’s Pier with just a spot of (unintentional) ICM
Orange Morning Swanage

Half Way Milestone

Click above for the Flickr Album of what I consider to be my best 10 images shot during the first 5,000 hours of this project.

On 17th March I recorded my 5,000th hour on this project learning the art of photography through 10,000 hours of deliberate practice (see “5,000 Hours – Half Way“).

Gypsy Horses

Equine Hello
“Equine Hello”

Friendly, yet illegally grazing, horses on the National Trust property of Gray’s Field Stoke Poges.

Semi-Abstracts: ICM and Multiple-Exposure

Displaced Rose
Displaced Rose

The above images was created following a lecture by John Humphrey to the Amersham Photographic Society on the 17th May, where, amongst a lot of other techniques, he recommended experimenting with the use of Photoshop displacement maps.

The Barbican Centre – Multiple Exposure
The Millennium Bridge – Centred multiple exposure.
“Reservoir Grasses” – sharp foreground blended with totally different background shot with ICM

Other artistic interests

  • Poetry of T.S. Elliot, particularly The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock and The Waste Land.
  • Jackson Pollock – read his biography by Deborah Solomon
  • Cy Twombly – read “Reading Cy Twombly” by Mary Jacobus
  • Jean Dubuffet – Exhibition at the Barbican – 20th May
  • Philosophy of Fredrick Nietzsche
  • Paintings of Francis Bacon.

Notes:

Most interesting external link:  Karl Taylor’s Favourite Photographers.