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Can good photographic ability be taught, or is it in-born?



 
 
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  #11  
Old May 19th 15, 07:37 AM posted to rec.photo.digital
Sandman
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Posts: 5,467
Default Can good photographic ability be taught, or is it in-born?

In article , Mayayana wrote:

Only if they're autistic. Skill isn't something people are born
with, skill is born from an interest, and that interest means you
do it, a lot.


I think that's the Western myth of equality speaking.


Not at all. Just facts.

We like to think we're civilized and fair. Part of that is to see
all people as equal in all things.


This has nothing to do with neither "talent" nor interest. Not everyone has the
ability to pursue an interest, not everyone has been exposed to what they may
have found to be their interest. Equality isn't a factor.

If you have an interest, you perform it often. The larger the interest, the more
time you spend performing it.

"Talent" is a slap in the face to those that are skilled. It minimizes the hours,
days and years they've spent practicing and perfecting their skill.

I would submit that talent is inborn, but the capacity for Art, with
a capital A, can be developed.


Nothing is inborn other than pure instincts.

--
Sandman
  #12  
Old May 19th 15, 07:55 AM posted to rec.photo.digital
Sandman
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 5,467
Default Can good photographic ability be taught, or is it in-born?

In article , Bill W wrote:

Rich A:
There is no argument, some painter and sculptors are
gifted

Sandman:
Only if they're autistic. Skill isn't something
people are born with, skill is born from an interest, and
that interest means you do it, a lot. Like Bob Ross said:
"Talent is pursued interest. Anything that you're willing to
practice, you can do". The "born with it" is a myth, probably
created by people that hasn't practiced enough. -- Sandman

Rich A:
You don't seriously think an Adams, or Steichen or Michaelangelo
could be taught to be as good as they were if they didn't have
in-born talent?


Sandman:
I don't "think", I know. There is no "in-born" photographic
talent. It doesn't exist.


Rich A:
I couldn't carve a "David" if I had 1000 years of training.


Sandman:
Yes, you could. A more or less accepted idea is that it takes
10,000 hours of practice to excel at a given task. The problem is
having an interest that leads you to invest 10,000 hours into
that.


I remember that a book came out a few years ago with this claim,


Yes, "Outliers: The Story of Success" by Malcolm Gladwell. It was based on a
study by the Swedish psychologist Anders Ericsson.

And the "10k rule" shouldn't be taken literally. The gist of it that talent is
a myth and anyone willing to spend an extraordinary amount of time practicing a
skill (i.e. pursuing an interest) will excel at it.

10k hours divided to 8 work hours divided into 250 work days in a year means 5
years exactly.

Surely you can't find it far-fetched that if a person spent 8 hours every
single work day for five years practicing one particular skill (like
photography), they wouldn't excel at it?

but I also know that the claim has been widely dismissed since then.


By?

There is no question that all that practice would make the average
person pretty good at whatever it is they're practicing, but "excel"
can be a pretty unsettled term when it comes to art.


Well, "art" is in the eye of the beholder, not necessarily the creator. The
topic is "skill" or "gifted". With 10k hours of practice, anyone could be as
skilled as the most accomplished artists with a shadow of a doubt, whether or
not he or she actually uses that skill to create what others consider "art" is
a whole other question.

In fact, this whole discussion invariably leads to the questions of
just what art is, and that one is never going to be answered. As
they say, ask 10 art critics, and you'll get 11 different answers.


Which is why "good photographic ability" and "art" isn't the same thing.

Anyway, if the claim were true, I'd be another Artur Rubinstein, but
I assure you, I suck at music, too.


You've really spent 40 hours a week for five solid years practicing the piano
and you suck at it? Then I submit the theory that you're not pursuing an
interest - you're pouring time into something you don't want to learn.

--
Sandman
  #13  
Old May 19th 15, 08:59 AM posted to rec.photo.digital
Bill W
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Posts: 1,692
Default Can good photographic ability be taught, or is it in-born?

On 19 May 2015 06:55:03 GMT, Sandman wrote:

In article , Bill W wrote:


Anyway, if the claim were true, I'd be another Artur Rubinstein, but
I assure you, I suck at music, too.


You've really spent 40 hours a week for five solid years practicing the piano
and you suck at it? Then I submit the theory that you're not pursuing an
interest - you're pouring time into something you don't want to learn.


I am sure that you would agree that some people learn activity 'X'
more quickly than others. What do you attribute that to?
  #14  
Old May 19th 15, 10:13 AM posted to rec.photo.digital
Sandman
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 5,467
Default Can good photographic ability be taught, or is it in-born?

In article , Bill W wrote:

Bill W:
Anyway, if the claim were true, I'd be another Artur Rubinstein,
but I assure you, I suck at music, too.


Sandman:
You've really spent 40 hours a week for five solid years
practicing the piano and you suck at it? Then I submit the theory
that you're not pursuing an interest - you're pouring time into
something you don't want to learn.


I am sure that you would agree that some people learn activity 'X'
more quickly than others. What do you attribute that to?


Greater interest.

Let me use an example. I've always been a visual kind of guy, took my art degree
at RMI Berghs, I've always painted, drawn and stuff. So that is where my
"interest" has been since I was a kind. I'm not "exceptional" at it, nor do I
strive to be. I like doing it so I've become more proficient at it.

When I started my work at ICA Förlaget, a Swedish editorial house, I started as
Art Director of a magazine. Then, in 1994-95, the "internet" thing blew up, and I
was asked if I wanted to be the "Web Designer" of the newly created IT
department, well of course.

With me, I had a colleague who was a programmer, a world that was very foreign to
me at the time. Watching him program didn't make any sense to me at all, and I
deemed my mind not "abstract" enough to easily comprehend "that stuff" and I was
content with that.

But as time moved along, this colleague of mine proved slow to work with and I
started to dabble with programming ever so slightly. Suddenly, a sparkle of
interest started, and over time, I poured more and more time into the programming
part of creating web pages.

Now, I run a software company that caters to the vast majority of Swedish
municipals and more with a niché-leading web application made entirely by me.

I had no "born with it" talents to lean on, I had no advantages over any other
person to do what I did, I just had a great interest in the craft, which meant I
spent countless hours doing what I do. Am I the "Ansel Adams" of software
programming? Of course not, but not due to lack of "talent", only due to lack of
interest. I have no interest in becoming more proficient currently, and probably
regretfully so.

Those that do excel at what they do do so because that's what they live for, what
they love doing. Not because they're "born with it".

Like I said earlier, attributing "skill" to "talent" is a slap in the face of the
countless hours and years spent practicing what you're currently good at.

--
Sandman
  #15  
Old May 19th 15, 10:20 AM posted to rec.photo.digital
Sandman
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 5,467
Default Can good photographic ability be taught, or is it in-born?

In article , Giff wrote:

Sandman:
Only if they're autistic. Skill isn't something people are born
with, skill is born from an interest, and that interest means you
do it, a lot.


Like Bob Ross said: "Talent is pursued interest. Anything that
you're willing to practice, you can do".


The "born with it" is a myth, probably created by people that
hasn't practiced enough.


Perhaps the experiences of the first years of life could mean a lot
for the "development" of a child's talent for photography, or
music, or whatever.


If you exchange "talent" with "interest" in the above sentence, then yes.

But after a certain age, I don't think that
"Anything that you're willing to practice, you can do" can hold any
more, especially if you modify the sentence to "Anything that
you're willing to practice, you can do very well"...


Of course it does. Problem is that the older you get, the less time you have to
spend for these things, you suddenly find that you have to have a "real" job to
pay the bills, and you have a marriage, and kids and whatnot, so lots of people
say things like "Yeah, I use to do that when I was younger, but not anymore".

Their interest takes a back seat to other priorities, which is fine. Many people
that excel at some specific thing have prioritized away many things you take for
granted, like friends, family, hobbies, free time, marriage, economic safety,
insurance and so on and so on.

If you start playing the piano today and spend 40 hours a week doing it, I
promise you that you will play as well as any of the piano legends after five
years.

Now, the question is - do you have 40 hours a week to spend doing this now?

This is why great artists have been doing what they do since they were kids,
because that's where they had the *time* to pursue their interest. If they don't,
they don't have time later on.

--
Sandman
  #16  
Old May 19th 15, 03:40 PM posted to rec.photo.digital
Mayayana
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 1,514
Default Can good photographic ability be taught, or is it in-born?


| We like to think we're civilized and fair. Part of that is to see
| all people as equal in all things.
|
| This has nothing to do with neither "talent" nor interest. Not everyone
has the
| ability to pursue an interest, not everyone has been exposed to what they
may
| have found to be their interest. Equality isn't a factor.
|

Equality of opportunity is an issue, but the myth we
cling to is that people are *literally* equal -- in terms
of talent, aptitude, intelligence, etc. "All men are created
equal". That's the myth that you're echoing. We confuse
literal equality with the equality of spirit implied by that
phrase. (Thus, currently we're trying to solve the "problem"
of less than 50% women in college math classes.)

| "Talent" is a slap in the face to those that are skilled. It minimizes the
hours,
| days and years they've spent practicing and perfecting their skill.
|

You make it sound like all people are nearly identical
computers that can simply be programmed.
You make your claims with nothing but adamant
proclamations to back them up:

"Nothing is inborn other than pure instincts."

That's a view similar to sociobiology theory, which
basically posits that we're DNA's vehicle to reproduce
itself. Edward Wilson at Harvard came up with that one.
His specialty was not philosophy, though. He was an
expert on ants. Could a worldview possibly be less
scientific, or more artless and irrelevant to the
human spirit?

Like Mr. Wilson, you seem to think your view is
"scientific", but there's nothing scientific about your
assertions. They're merely belief. How do you know what's
inborn? Do we even really know what a person is? Is
there a soul? Is there rebirth? If so, what carries through?
If not, how do you know for sure? How can we know
what we don't know, or what we can't know? (The caterpillar
on a leaf can't know that a harvester machine is about
to remove the field it's in, for instance. How silly, then,
would it be for use to assume that we can and do know
all of what's involved in being human?)

Whatever one might answer to those questions, I think
that if you ask any mother about her children she'll
express a sense that each child arrived with his or her own
aptitudes, agenda and personality style. For a scientific
materialist like yourself, with supreme confidence in the
view that reality is no more and no less than physical
matter and physical laws, that sort of common sense
experience presents a conundrum. How would we account
for it? If the mothers are wrong then how do you refute
their experience? What's your evidence that we're all just
organic computers born with blank hard disks? (And,
again, why would you assume that you can know that for
sure? That sounds like fundamentalist religious dogma to
me. You might say it accords with modern science, but
it's still dogma.)

Mozart composing as a young child.... must we assume
he had a nanny who forced him to practice piano 8 hours
per day from the age of 3 months in order to fit your
theory? DaVinci's genius in drawing, painting and
engineering.... He just happened to be "interested" in those
things? And where did that "interest" come from? If it
struck him then why aren't at least 1 in 100 people a
Da Vinci?

| I would submit that talent is inborn, but the capacity for Art, with
| a capital A, can be developed.
|
| Nothing is inborn other than pure instincts.
|

And you're not interested in the question of Art? To
my mind that's far more interesting than skill, yet you
didn't address that point at all. If someone practices
photography for years and develops an ability to take
exactly the picture they want in nearly all cases, yet
those pictures don't resonate with viewers, what's
the value of their expertise? The original question was
about "good photographic ability". Whether or not people
articulate their thoughts about Art, I think we all assume
that art plays a part in good photography.
But I'm not surprised you didn't address it. Artfulness
is something that can't be measured with scientific
instruments and can't be taught in terms of practicing
techniques. It's a wrench in the works of your theory.

I thought Sister Wendy, who used to be on PBS, had
a good explanation of art. She identified several levels,
such as social, political, religious... with "spiritual" art
being the highest form. I'm hesitant to define that on
her behalf and I can't remember exactly what she said,
but I think we can all understand it at least to some
extent. Spiritual art evokes a sense of sublime, beyond
our everyday paradigms -- some kind of intuitive felt
truth "above" the level of common, worldly truths. And
I think that someone who's pursuing artful expression is
always striving for that kind of art -- be it in photography,
painting, music, cooking, or whatever.

In the past I've been involved on an amateur level with
Ikebana -- Japanese flower arranging. It's a very interesting
art form. One arranges the flowers in the space. (Western
arranging sees only the objects and not the space.) One
bows before placing each flower. The idea with the bow is to
let go of one's egoic urge to make great art and, through
that humility, to see where the flower belongs. Instant
feedback. One can see when an arrangment works or
doesn't. An Ikebana arrangment can be stunning to look at.
Yet there's very little in the way of skill required. One could
practice the particular techniques and rules of arranging
for years without necessarily ever making a good arrangement.
I find cooking to be similar. There are lots of details to know,
but in the end there's a kind of intuitive connection that
results in good food. When ego gets out of the way, Art
happens. Isn't it the same with photography? There's mastering
the tools, what you call skill, but once that's done one still
needs an eye for the good shot, no? Which of those is the
"good photographic ability"?


  #17  
Old May 19th 15, 05:18 PM posted to rec.photo.digital
PeterN[_6_]
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 4,254
Default Can good photographic ability be taught, or is it in-born?

On 5/19/2015 3:59 AM, Bill W wrote:
On 19 May 2015 06:55:03 GMT, Sandman wrote:

In article , Bill W wrote:


Anyway, if the claim were true, I'd be another Artur Rubinstein, but
I assure you, I suck at music, too.


You've really spent 40 hours a week for five solid years practicing the piano
and you suck at it? Then I submit the theory that you're not pursuing an
interest - you're pouring time into something you don't want to learn.


I am sure that you would agree that some people learn activity 'X'
more quickly than others. What do you attribute that to?


He's trolling again. I try not to feed him, except when I'm bored.

--
PeterN
  #18  
Old May 19th 15, 05:35 PM posted to rec.photo.digital
PeterN[_6_]
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 4,254
Default Can good photographic ability be taught, or is it in-born?

On 5/19/2015 10:40 AM, Mayayana wrote:
| We like to think we're civilized and fair. Part of that is to see
| all people as equal in all things.
|
| This has nothing to do with neither "talent" nor interest. Not everyone
has the
| ability to pursue an interest, not everyone has been exposed to what they
may
| have found to be their interest. Equality isn't a factor.
|

Equality of opportunity is an issue, but the myth we
cling to is that people are *literally* equal -- in terms
of talent, aptitude, intelligence, etc. "All men are created
equal". That's the myth that you're echoing. We confuse
literal equality with the equality of spirit implied by that
phrase. (Thus, currently we're trying to solve the "problem"
of less than 50% women in college math classes.)

| "Talent" is a slap in the face to those that are skilled. It minimizes the
hours,
| days and years they've spent practicing and perfecting their skill.
|

You make it sound like all people are nearly identical
computers that can simply be programmed.
You make your claims with nothing but adamant
proclamations to back them up:

"Nothing is inborn other than pure instincts."

That's a view similar to sociobiology theory, which
basically posits that we're DNA's vehicle to reproduce
itself. Edward Wilson at Harvard came up with that one.
His specialty was not philosophy, though. He was an
expert on ants. Could a worldview possibly be less
scientific, or more artless and irrelevant to the
human spirit?

Like Mr. Wilson, you seem to think your view is
"scientific", but there's nothing scientific about your
assertions. They're merely belief. How do you know what's
inborn? Do we even really know what a person is? Is
there a soul? Is there rebirth? If so, what carries through?
If not, how do you know for sure? How can we know
what we don't know, or what we can't know? (The caterpillar
on a leaf can't know that a harvester machine is about
to remove the field it's in, for instance. How silly, then,
would it be for use to assume that we can and do know
all of what's involved in being human?)

Whatever one might answer to those questions, I think
that if you ask any mother about her children she'll
express a sense that each child arrived with his or her own
aptitudes, agenda and personality style. For a scientific
materialist like yourself, with supreme confidence in the
view that reality is no more and no less than physical
matter and physical laws, that sort of common sense
experience presents a conundrum. How would we account
for it? If the mothers are wrong then how do you refute
their experience? What's your evidence that we're all just
organic computers born with blank hard disks? (And,
again, why would you assume that you can know that for
sure? That sounds like fundamentalist religious dogma to
me. You might say it accords with modern science, but
it's still dogma.)

Mozart composing as a young child.... must we assume
he had a nanny who forced him to practice piano 8 hours
per day from the age of 3 months in order to fit your
theory? DaVinci's genius in drawing, painting and
engineering.... He just happened to be "interested" in those
things? And where did that "interest" come from? If it
struck him then why aren't at least 1 in 100 people a
Da Vinci?




You could rephrase your statement to 1 in 100 million, and you would
still be correct.

BTW: One of the most inspiring afternoons I spen, was when I was given a
personal tour of Armand Hammer's office. I spent a lot of time viewing
his original Da Vinci sketches, although I was limited to about 30
seconds each, undet i one candlepower light.





| I would submit that talent is inborn, but the capacity for Art, with
| a capital A, can be developed.
|
| Nothing is inborn other than pure instincts.
|

And you're not interested in the question of Art? To
my mind that's far more interesting than skill, yet you
didn't address that point at all. If someone practices
photography for years and develops an ability to take
exactly the picture they want in nearly all cases, yet
those pictures don't resonate with viewers, what's
the value of their expertise? The original question was
about "good photographic ability". Whether or not people
articulate their thoughts about Art, I think we all assume
that art plays a part in good photography.
But I'm not surprised you didn't address it. Artfulness
is something that can't be measured with scientific
instruments and can't be taught in terms of practicing
techniques. It's a wrench in the works of your theory.

I thought Sister Wendy, who used to be on PBS, had
a good explanation of art. She identified several levels,
such as social, political, religious... with "spiritual" art
being the highest form. I'm hesitant to define that on
her behalf and I can't remember exactly what she said,
but I think we can all understand it at least to some
extent. Spiritual art evokes a sense of sublime, beyond
our everyday paradigms -- some kind of intuitive felt
truth "above" the level of common, worldly truths. And
I think that someone who's pursuing artful expression is
always striving for that kind of art -- be it in photography,
painting, music, cooking, or whatever.

In the past I've been involved on an amateur level with
Ikebana -- Japanese flower arranging. It's a very interesting
art form. One arranges the flowers in the space. (Western
arranging sees only the objects and not the space.) One
bows before placing each flower. The idea with the bow is to
let go of one's egoic urge to make great art and, through
that humility, to see where the flower belongs. Instant
feedback. One can see when an arrangment works or
doesn't. An Ikebana arrangment can be stunning to look at.
Yet there's very little in the way of skill required. One could
practice the particular techniques and rules of arranging
for years without necessarily ever making a good arrangement.
I find cooking to be similar. There are lots of details to know,
but in the end there's a kind of intuitive connection that
results in good food. When ego gets out of the way, Art
happens. Isn't it the same with photography? There's mastering
the tools, what you call skill, but once that's done one still
needs an eye for the good shot, no? Which of those is the
"good photographic ability"?




--
PeterN
  #19  
Old May 19th 15, 06:16 PM posted to rec.photo.digital
Sandman
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 5,467
Default Can good photographic ability be taught, or is it in-born?

In article , Giff wrote:

Sandman:
This is why great artists have been doing what they do since they
were kids, because that's where they had the *time* to pursue
their interest. If they don't, they don't have time later on.


But there's people who practice the same amount of time but reach
very different levels.


Like who?

How do you explain that?


It's either lack of interest or lack of time. Either they aren't practicing the
same amount of time or they are, but they're not as interested as the guy who
ended up better skilled at it.

--
Sandman
  #20  
Old May 19th 15, 06:22 PM posted to rec.photo.digital
Sandman
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 5,467
Default Can good photographic ability be taught, or is it in-born?

In article , Mayayana wrote:

| We like to think we're civilized and fair. Part of that is to see
| all people as equal in all things. | | This has nothing to do
with neither "talent" nor interest. Not everyone has the | ability
to pursue an interest, not everyone has been exposed to what they
may | have found to be their interest. Equality isn't a factor. |


Equality of opportunity is an issue, but the myth we cling to is
that people are *literally* equal


You are free to "cling" to that idea all you like, it is not a factor in what
UI've written thus far.

in terms of talent, aptitude, intelligence, etc. "All men are
created equal". That's the myth that you're echoing.


Incorrect.

| "Talent" is a slap in the face to those that are skilled. It
minimizes the hours, | days and years they've spent practicing and
perfecting their skill. |


You make it sound like all people are nearly identical computers
that can simply be programmed. You make your claims with nothing
but adamant proclamations to back them up:


And nothing to disprove it. This is psychology, not math. It's hard to really
"prove" anything. You make studies and draw conclusions from the results, which
has been done.

My claim is that if one person is more skilled at a given task than another, it
is because he has practiced it more, which in turn is a result from a more eager
interest in said task. Not because he has a "born" ability to paint masterpieces
or a "born" ability to play the piano.

As I said, some people are actually different, savants and autistic people. They
are quite literally wired differently than other people which may lead to them
being able to use their brain in a way a "normal" person can not. That, of
course, can lead to perceived skill. I.e. someone that can remember thousands of
decimals of pi but can't get properly dressed. But that's neither skill nor
talent, that's just a brain that works in a very unusual way, leading to the
person being able to do that most can not.

For normal people, talent does not exist, only skill. Learned skill.

--
Sandman
 




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