Category: Books

I have come across Cal Newport’s book “So Good They Can’t Ignore You” for the second time in the past year. First time, it was through his blog on study hacks, second – through an inspiring interview with Derek Sivers. So I finally decided to read the book, although I have become largely disillusioned with non-fiction literature (I think, storytelling is the key to transmitting really fundamental ideas, but this is beside the point).

This book is surprisingly interesting. It’s about career-building, and the main idea is that trying to find a dream job by following one’s passion is bad idea; instead, one should become remarkably good at whatever he/she is doing for living, and the passion will follow.

One curious point at the beginning of the book is the contrast between the craftsman mindset, where one is concerned with adding value to the product of the work, and the passion mindset, where one is focused on maximizing of the value that the work can bring to him-/herself. In the case of the craftsman, the action precedes the passion. Interestingly, this is in line with the main recommendation of Robert Boice to university professors – start writing before you are ready, certainly before all experiments are completed and the data is analyzed.

There are some definite advantages to adopting the craftsman mindset. It removes the psychological pressure to be completely satisfied with the job, which is impossible to achieve anyway, considering the wide ranges of work subjects, conditions, contexts, etc. Instead it affords a kind of stoic clarity: this is what I get, so I will work with it to polish my skills (altimately, myself). Basically, this comfort comes from conceding control (which we didn’t really have anyway) over the fact whether we like every single detail of the work and every particular moment.

It is almost redundant to explain how this principle applies to photography. Photography is a craft by definition, so it pays off going out and shooting, instead of questioning whether you have the right gear, the right conditions, or whether this is the right calling for you. Especially if you are a pro, the questions will be rendered moot because you will soon be out of the job if you are not constantly working on developing your skills.

Robert Boice, in his book “Professors as Writers”, explains how spontaneous writing is helpful for getting unblocked, unstuck, and warmed up, which is crucial for establishing a daily writing habits.

However, at some stage, spontaneous writing, as helpful as it is in working around the self-consciousness and self-censorship, becomes counter-productive for precisely that reason: spontaneous work by itself does not produce coherent, finished results. What tis needed at that stage is a healthy dose of what Boice calls generative writing. It is still quite free-form, unconstrained and not particularly concerned with perfection of style and logic, but it is focussed on a particular topic. In order to maintain the flow of ideas, Boice suggests alternating between spontaneous and generative work.

I can see clear parallels between this “academic writer’s” workflow and that of a photographer. Writer’s block is a problem so common, despite the debates of its reality, that books have been written on how to overcome it. In photography, it is equally easy to become paralyzed and never start creative projects because of perfectionism (reluctance to start under imperfect conditions, without “ideal” gear, sufficient time, etc. or reluctance to share less-than-perfect images with others), self-doubt or impatience (rushing to complete the projects and not allowing ourselves to slow down in order to produce better, more significant work).

For photographers, the spontaneous work is carrying a camera (even a phone camera) and shooting everything that we come across and that catches our attention. There should be no goal to eventually share the images with anyone. The practice of observation and of taking photos is the goal in itself.

Then, in order to make tangible developments of our skills, by analogy with the writers in Boice’s book, the photographers would benefit from periodically doing more structured shoots involving more elaborate production. Those could be projects focussed on a particular theme or a technique.

For me personally, the projects involving local dancers or athletes from our university provide opportunities to do generative work. Making sure that spontaneous work is happening on the daily basis is proving to be more challenging.

As a side note, another aspect of photography, which doesn’t readily fall into spontaneous/generative classification is post-processing and development of skills and creative techniques related to it. Perhaps, it similar to some type of supporting work (e.g. referencing) that writers have to to in their craft, and since the the writing craft appears to be fairly well-researched, I am looking forward to learning about it.