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Adult beginners

I am studying violin and piano alongside my six-year-old daughter. We both started from the same level – absolute beginners. Yet at the music store, our lesson books are in different sections. I am classified as an adult beginner, while she is a beginner without a modifier. This made me think whether our experiences of learning music are really that different.

I think we, adult beginners, do approach music differently: we are both more and less serious about it. And in both instances, we are wrong.

On the one hand, being a hobby, music is quite low on the list of adults’ priorities. This prevents them from focussing on the practice completely, instead of worrying at the back of their minds whether they should be doing something else at the moment. By not maintaining the focus, the adult beginners miss an essential component of an optimal (read:enjoyable) experience.

At the same time, and ironically in contradiction to the point above, adults expect too much from the music practice in terms of results. For children, the practice itself is the game. My daughter literally plays music, so it is an autotelic activity for her. I, on the other hand, may be able to convince myself with the logical part of my brain that the practice itself is the goal, but somewhere on the background there is an expectation of a payoff, e.g., improvement of my technique. In other words, I play to learn how to play, and my daughter plays for the sake of playing.

The autotelic quality of an activity, when it derives meaning from itself, is another essential component of an optimal experience. It allows children to stick to music practice week after week and year after year, while most adults quit soon after starting because their goals are different. Actually, children don’t even think in terms of goals; they just play.

…This makes me marvel once again at the depth of Nike’s “Just do it” slogan.

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Focus

One of the necessary conditions for achieving a flow state (when you are so engrossed in an activity that you lose a sense of time, and the challenges you face seem to be perfectly matched by your skill level at any given moment) is the ability to focus on the task at hand. This is easier said than done, and both the ability of the individual and the nature of the activity play significant roles. Apparently, people who are good at concentrating their attention are able to restrict the input of external information that they are processing. In other words, they can filter out everything that is not relevant to the activity. This enables them to enjoy what they are doing instead of constantly questioning whether they should be doing something else.

As I was reading about this in Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s book “Flow” (my favourite recent read), I thought that artists (or authors in any creative field) use the same principle to create a more focused, and therefore more enjoyable, experience for the audience. For example, in photography, we use shallow depth of field to isolate the subject from the background. This way, we do the pre-filtering of the visual input for the viewers, so they have a better visual experience.

Another photography technique that uses the same idea and that I find particularly useful is covering candid environmental portraits to black-and-white. I did it most recently when shooting dance classes at a local studio. In that particular case, while the subjects themselves are photogenic, the background of the dance studio, littered with clothes, shoes and bags of various bright colours, is definitely not. Removing the colour information from the image guides the viewer’s attention to the subject by literally reducing the input bandwidth. I also often use this technique in street photography, where the colours of the background scene are not only impossible to control but also irrelevant to the subject.

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Flow

Trying to surf on a stand-up paddle board (SUP surfing) for the first time over the last couple of days decidedly did not feel like a flow experience for me. The concept of flow was coined by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. I’ve been reading his book, aptly named “Flow”, and it’s one of the best reads I’ve head in a while.

At he first place, SUP surfing is supposed to have all the components of a flow-inducing activity: the goal is simple and well-defined – not to fall from the board; there is immediate feedback – I am either falling or not; the activity requires complete focus and certain level of skill. So in principle, SUP surfing is supposed to be tremendously enjoyable and relaxing. Yet so far, it hasn’t been so. This was initially surprising to me, because I really enjoy SUP boarding on flat water.

I believe the reason SUP surfing doesn’t feel as enjoyable to me as I would like is because it lacks one important aspect of a flow activity – my skills are not matched to the level of challenge. The learning curve for surfing of any kind, SUP surfing included, is quite steep. Enjoying the learning process requires a certain mindset that takes be a bit of time to develop. I realize that I need a certain playfulness, a willingness to view numerous falls and tumbles as fun time in the surf, rather than as continuous negative feedback on the level of your surfing skills. When SUP boarding on flat water, if I fall from the board, that’s a clearly unintended event and something that I generally try to avoid. When SUP surfing, falling over is the name of the game. In fact, being able to stay upright and to catch a wave is more of an exception, at least at my current level. Hopefully, one day it will become a true flow – both challenging and enjoyable.

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Simplicity

I’ve just finished reading a rather Machiavellian book “Extreme Ownership” by Jocko Willink and Leif Babin. Part of it’s appeal is simplicity of the concepts of military leadership that are presented there. In fact, the authors make a compelling case for simplicity being a necessary condition for effectiveness of a mission plan. Not-surprisingly, the book also plays on the universal applicability of the principles of military strategy. From my experience, I can attest that at least some of these principles apply in science and art.

As it happens, I’ve been working on a research proposal that is supposed to outline my research program for the next five years. The issue is that the adjudicating panel spans a range of expertise, but none of the panelists is exactly in my area. Hence the need to simplify the description of my work. This may seem like a limitation for the proposal, but it’s actually a great thing. I find it very helpful to have main objectives to be formulated with enough simplicity that I can keep them on top of my mind on a daily basis as I work with graduate students, who do the actual research work. This makes making everyday micro decisions easy: does this move us closer to the objective? When the description of the goal is simple, this loaded question reduces to a yes-or-no one.

The same principle applies to photography. My camera is pretty advanced, and there is a nearly infinite number of combinations or lenses and settings that I could use. However, I find that it is most effective to simplify things. I only have a few combinations of settings: for action (maximum aperture, fast shutter speed, auto ISO, high framing rate, continuous focus), for portraits (same as above, but slower shutter speed, sometimes, manual low ISO), for landscapes (narrow aperture, low ISO, single-shot focus, single frame drive). There are othe creative scenarios beside these, but they are exceptions. So the question of choosing the settings, which can be overwhelming to a beginner photographer, can actually be simplified to “what are you trying to achieve?” And the beauty is that there are only few answers: freeze (or blur) motion, separate the subject from the background (or maximize the depth of field). This classification of shooting scenarios is so simple that it frees me to mostly think about composition, which is always important.

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Star Wars

My six-year-old daughter is the first person I know, who read a Star Wars book (a collection of bedtime stories) before watching any of the movies. She is really into the interconnected storylines of the various characters. The other day, we had a conversation that seemed straight out of James Breackwell’s hilarious Twitter feed. She put aside the book, sat at the table to have breakfast and said, looking quite thoughtful:

– Dad, you look like like Han Solo.

I thought that was not bad. Even considering the very biased source of this opinion, comparison to Harrison Ford based on looks is nothing to be upset about.

– Mom, you look like princess Leia.

Now both my wife and I were quite pleased.
She though some more.

– Wait. This means I have to be Kylo Ren… Sorry, dad.

Perhaps being Han Solo is a mixed blessing after all.

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Photo opportunities

The concierge at my hotel in Paris (who, incidentally, could fluently speak several languages) gave me some excellent suggestions regarding moving around in Paris and interesting sights to photograph. In retrospect, most of the things he recommended turned out to be quite the opppsite (e.g. suggested metro stations were closed and supposedly photogenic sights turning out to be not so much so). He did, however, have the correct sense that timing and luck were important factors in taking a good photo. For example, he mentioned that a photo of the Eiffel Tour being struck by a lightning made the front pages of local newspapers not long ago. The Tower is the most photographed monument in the world, so for a photo of it to make front-page news requires something to be going on (in addition to the tower simply being there).

The concierge also suggested to look for a moonrise over the Notre-Dame cathedral, and I was excited to try it the same evening, because the moon was still nearly full, and I was hoping to catch it between the towers of the cathedral. Unfortunately, the location of the moonrise had shifted already, and it was no longer visible from the cathedral square. But the moon still made a spectacular appearance over the Seine river, as fellow photographers gathered on the bridges connecting ile de la Cite to the river banks to capture it.

Here is my attempt. I knew from experience that the moon needed to be exposed as a grey rock in a midday sun. This presents a dilemma if one wants to simultaneously (and correctly) expose the nigh-time scenery. Of course, taking two separate exposures and combining them in post-processing is a possibility, but if one wants to avoid compositing, it is better to underexpose the shadows and correctly expose the relatively bright moon.

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Shooting on the go

I’ve often been concerned that doing travel photography is detracting from the actual experience of taking in new sites, smells, the vibe of new places. For example, lugging the camera gear around is quite a nuisance in itself.

On the other hand, I find that taking photos, and lately videos, while wondering around actually adds focus to the present moment experience. It actually helps me formulate my expression of the new place. In this sense, photo- and videography is similar to blogging and journaling. You don’t really know what your thought about any particular subject are until you speak them out loud or put them down on paper. And writing things down is less intrusive on others because it’s easier to ignore a blog post than to tune out someone’s talking. Stating your thoughts publicly, though, is important, because it forces you to crystallize your opinion and to take ownership of it. This is equivalent to publishing photos and videos, and this is why blogging is not equivalent to journaling, which is inherently private.

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Cinderella’s dreams

My six-year-old daughter is going surfing. With a considerable help from her mother, she is putting on a neoprene boot. It’s not an easy task, so she notes:

– You know, it’s just like “Cinderella”…

Then, she becomes lost in thought. My wife asks:

– What are you dreaming about?

– A prince. On a beautiful horse.

– …

I am starting to get a bit worried, so I ask:

– Why are you dreaming of a prince on a horse?

– I just love horses…

I feel better.

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Screwing up

My wife and I are putting together a shelf for art supplies. It’s a final stage of the assembly – only a few screws are left. Our six-year-old daughter walks in:

— Wow! You guys have done it! The shelf is almost finished. You just need to screwed it up!

It’s good when someone has confidence in you…

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Arguing with a cheetah

My daughter’s Grade 1 class has been practicing debate techniques. Yesterday morning, after reading a book about cheetahs (her favourite animals), my daughter said that if she had a debate with a cheetah about the black “tear marks” that help cheetahs avoid sun glare, it would go something like this (quoting her almost verbatim):

“The Cheetah would say:

— My tear marks are better than your sunglasses, because I don’t have to put them on and cannot lose them.i

Then I would say:

— Yes, Cheetah, however, I can take off my sunglasses anytime I want, but you cannot take off your tear marks!

And the Cheetah would have nothing to say to that! <victorious laughter>”

I am suddenly worried about any potential arguments we might have in the future….