[alamo5000]

There's something democratically reassuring about the idea that we could become Masters at anything - from cooking to brain surgery - given enough practice, but it may not be true.

Can 10,000 hours of practice make you an expert? - BBC News

I don't believe just raw 'practice' can make you better at something. If you're just repetitively doing the same thing over and over again that might not get you anywhere in the grand scheme of things. And no, not everyone is going to be a champion, and not everyone will develop the skill of a professional.

From my own experience I used to be a competitive athlete (injury ended that) and I found that practice has to be done intelligently. Some people would go practice for hours and hours for days on end but other people would do two 30 minute sessions per day every other day. Guess who got better? The guy (or girl) who used their brain typically was the better competitor.

Basically when it comes to photography it's the same principle.

Not everyone will wind up a professional and not everyone wants to be a professional but I do think a lot of the basic skills can be learned and honed regardless of how blunt the original instrument is Trust me, when I first started out I was definitely not the sharpest tool in the shed, but over time I feel like I personally have improved a lot over where I started from.

[WPRESTO]

I think you are talking about slightly different things.

Most people who want to can acquire reasonable proficiency in photography. With effort, they can learn to reliably take technically sound and aesthetically pleasing photos, with maybe the occasional standout. For most of us that's probably all we aspire to. But Walt used the word genius. That's something else. No amount of piano practice can turn a competent musician into Mozart. Mozarts are born. Maybe there are latent Mozarts whose genius waits to be unlocked - but I'm sure they are few.

It's elusive with photography because the difference between highly skilled and genius is more contestable. And to be honest each rung up the ladder is harder than the one before. I look at the work of good photographers and see just how many rungs there are above. If I tried hard enough I could climb several more rungs. Some of those rungs involve inspiration and creativity as well as technical skills. But the top rungs would always be beyond me because they are reserved for those with more creative imagination.

Years ago I lent my camera to an artistic guy. He had never used an SLR. Straight away he took brilliant and imaginative photos that I could never have envisaged. I could see what he had done and I learned something. I learned to see better. But on the ladder of creativity I could never be on the same rung.

Precisely. Creativity, imagination, vision are things some people have. They are gifts, not achievements. Learning to draw (or be competent using a camera) is an achievement, but it isn't equivalent to creativity. I've run through the arguments of whether thinking and creativity can be taught, and also encountered "Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain" which is a method for teaching drawing technique and gaining skill, but not being creative. The book unfortunately enormously popularized the notion that the right and left sides of the brain do different kinds of tasks, an idea that has some truth, but which the book grotesquely oversimplifies. The author teaches art, neuroscientists whose commentary I've read are not impressed with her understanding of brain function. The method does work for many, perhaps most people, but even the author admits that the brain function she put in the book was to give the method scientific verisimilitude, not because it was entirely accurate.

[Rondec]

There's something democratically reassuring about the idea that we could become Masters at anything - from cooking to brain surgery - given enough practice, but it may not be true.

Can 10,000 hours of practice make you an expert? - BBC News

I have always hated that idea, popularized by Malcolm Gladwell. 10,000 hours of practice will allow you to maximize whatever natural talent you have, but it won't take you beyond whatever that ceiling is. That said, few us truly maximize our potential in most areas of our lives.

When it comes to photography, I do think it is helpful to practice seeing -- even without ever taking a photo. Roberto Valenzuela has published a number of books in which he outlines exercises to practice to develop a better eye for framing and seeing light and I really find those to be useful. The book Picture Perfect Practice is really good.

I do think people use the word "Creative" fairly loosely, just as they do the word "genius." To me, Creativity is coming up with something new and unique (in a positive way) and few of us are able to do that. I don't know though that there is much Creativity really involved with the standard portrait session or landscape photo capture.

[clackers]

When it comes to photography, I do think it is helpful to practice seeing -- even without ever taking a photo. Roberto Valenzuela has published a number of books in which he outlines exercises to practice to develop a better eye for framing and seeing light and I really find those to be useful. The book Picture Perfect Practice is really good.

Yeah, you should check out his Creative Live course 'Location-Posing-Execution'. Watch as he puts amateur photographers like us through the wringer!

[WPRESTO]

True that few of us realize our full potential in areas where we have aptitude. To paraphrase someone wiser than I, we all know what we might achieve, but others judge us by our accomplishments. My response: please yourself, which is probably the best the vast majority of us can do.

[Outis]

I don't think there's a conflict between just pushing buttons and expressing my creativity. In the field, I take every shot I think might turn out well. Most of the artistic decisions for me come in editing/postprocessing.

[dsmithhfx]

Further to this discussion:

NVIDIA Neural Network Generates Photorealistic Faces With Disturbingly Natural Results | HotHardware

https://qz.com/1115179/mit-used-data-from-reddit-to-train-an-ai-to-tell-horror-stories/

[Doundounba]

From time to time I always go to B&H's Youtube page and check out the instructional videos that they put up. (...)

An excellent video - thanks for posting! I thought the intro about the history of photography and the "you can't blame the camera anymore" and his first critique was a bit long, but once he pulls out his list (around the 26m mark), it gets really good, IMHO.

[alamo5000]

I have always hated that idea, popularized by Malcolm Gladwell. 10,000 hours of practice will allow you to maximize whatever natural talent you have, but it won't take you beyond whatever that ceiling is. That said, few us truly maximize our potential in most areas of our lives.

When it comes to photography, I do think it is helpful to practice seeing -- even without ever taking a photo. Roberto Valenzuela has published a number of books in which he outlines exercises to practice to develop a better eye for framing and seeing light and I really find those to be useful. The book Picture Perfect Practice is really good.

I do think people use the word "Creative" fairly loosely, just as they do the word "genius." To me, Creativity is coming up with something new and unique (in a positive way) and few of us are able to do that. I don't know though that there is much Creativity really involved with the standard portrait session or landscape photo capture.

I agree with almost every single thing you mentioned there. That last sentence though... with landscapes the creativity is a slow process. I watched a documentary on Ansel Adams and while he had no control over how that mountain was shaped, he became a very very keen observer. Studying out when the light hits, where it hits, what kind of light and just being there in the very right moment of time was no accident. The thing is people think they can just walk out and go to the same spot and snap photos and viola. It's not so easy. Studying that same spot for months on end... and then having enough command over the equipment to know 'I need a red filter in this situation in order to produce X result'... that is a process of very very slow creativity and probably a lot of trial and error.

Crossing over into the world of Artwork, people have long studied what angles make people look appealing, what light, all sorts of things. If you're talking about creating some sort of photo booth experience or taking passport photos that's one thing, but just the simple idea of picking out the background and figuring out light are seemingly small things that yield huge results.

There are some people on the forum here that I TRULY admire and I consider them extremely talented. I think it's a form of creativity. But the thing is, once you know what to look for those seemingly small things can be applied in numerous circumstances.

[Rondec]

I agree with almost every single thing you mentioned there. That last sentence though... with landscapes the creativity is a slow process. I watched a documentary on Ansel Adams and while he had no control over how that mountain was shaped, he became a very very keen observer. Studying out when the light hits, where it hits, what kind of light and just being there in the very right moment of time was no accident. The thing is people think they can just walk out and go to the same spot and snap photos and viola. It's not so easy. Studying that same spot for months on end... and then having enough command over the equipment to know 'I need a red filter in this situation in order to produce X result'... that is a process of very very slow creativity and probably a lot of trial and error.

Crossing over into the world of Artwork, people have long studied what angles make people look appealing, what light, all sorts of things. If you're talking about creating some sort of photo booth experience or taking passport photos that's one thing, but just the simple idea of picking out the background and figuring out light are seemingly small things that yield huge results.

There are some people on the forum here that I TRULY admire and I consider them extremely talented. I think it's a form of creativity. But the thing is, once you know what to look for those seemingly small things can be applied in numerous circumstances.

Landscape is something that to me takes work man like effort. Learning what works and what doesn't and when the light is best. What sort of things make for a good composition. I guess I see creativity as creating something new and unique. Maybe back in 20s and 30s that was still possible, but it doesn't feel like it is easy today. Flickr is full of wonderful photos with great light -- hard to be unique in such an environment.

There are other areas of photography where I do see creativity and people let their personalities come through in their photos. I just don't see it much in landscape work (and that's most of what I photograph).

[leekil]

Not so sure of that. It's similar to "teaching students to think." You give them examples of logical thinking, you pose problems that require thinking to solve, and either they incorporate the models and they think-out the problems, or they do not. You cultivate what is there, but you do not fill a vacuum. Similarly with vision and creativity - - you cultivate, inspire, give examples, bring out latent talent, but if there isn't something there already...

What I try to do is look at a scene and feel it. That sounds flakey, but we respond emotionally to what we see. The range of emotions is very broad, from disgust to awe and everything in between.

Perhaps the responding to emotions, or allowing yourself to access them, is what can enable creativity. If you are trying to express emotion in your photography, you need to be perceptive to see it and receptive of it yourself. There may be ways that you need to be open to things in order to access creativity. In other areas of life, I think you do better at things if you have a strong emotional connection to them.

Separate from that, creativity may also come from sampling a lot of different type of things; trying different things out, even if you don't think they will turn out well. Eventually you will hit upon something that is good, and different from what you have done before.

So this album, to me, seems to be a work of genius; how could anyone else just sit down and write it?

Ryan Adams, "Heartbreaker" Album - YouTube

But I have heard (read?) Ryan Adams say that he taught himself how to write songs; it doesn't come naturally to him. So he might be a counterexample.

[dsmithhfx]

Master class: André Kertész

André Kertész's everyday poetry ? in pictures | Art and design | The Guardian

[normhead]

Any basketball coach has the answer......

Different players have different abilities, never ask a player to do something he can't. (Corollary in any field there will be people who'd like to excel but can't, and those who excel easily and without effort. )

Practice doesn't make perfect, perfect practice makes perfect. (You can practice as much as you want but if you are practicing bad technique, you'll never be any better no matter how long you practice, because you are practicing mistakes.)

Good shooting makes up for a lot of mistakes. (A good eye makes up for a lot of poor technique.)

If you are around the rim, I don't care what you do, but you have to score. (If you see a great scene, get the image by any means necessary. No rules.)

Play the offence until you know how to get an open shot. Then forget the offence and score. ( everything you do is to set up your shot. Once you can see the shot, forget the rules and do what you have to do to make the most of it.)

To have a championship team. I need 2 really good shooters, two really good defenders, and a really good ball handler. It's not often you find all three in one player. (There's a lot that goes in to being great photographer. About as rare as a basketball player with all three of the required championship skills. but I can give you all kinds of examples. John Diebler (or Threebler) was known for spending all kinds of hours in the gym, holds the Ohio State record for 3 pointers in a season, but never learned to play defence well enough to play pro.)

To me saying practice solves everything is like saying anyone can be 3 point shooter. It just isn't so. The work of "gym rats" and effort guys can be pretty impressive, until you see the work of a guy who both puts in the effort and actually has talent. I've coached both types,

Basketball coaches know a lot more than you might think.