Closing The_Gap

A day doesn’t go by in online photography circles without some professional decrying the fact that amateurs are driving prices down, ruining the market, and basically killing photography and everything that’s good and fair.

We don’t think professionals should worry about what the amateurs are doing and we try to explain why we believe so in the latest episode of the podcast.

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The importance of pursuing personal projects to revitalize one’s creativity cannot be overstated.

Whether photography is your job, a side gig, or just a hobby, it is important to do what you love, or the well of creativity will soon dry up.

We discuss this topic in the latest episode of the podcast and give practical tips on how to find personal projects to work on.

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For this episode of the podcast, we give voice to one of our listeners and a great friend of us, Pia Parolin.

Pia used the button we put under every episode to record her question for us, which can be summarized as “Now that I have become proficient with my photography and started showing my work, what next steps should I take to be more successful and appreciated?”

We believe that Pia is already doing great with her photography and taking all the right steps towards closing the gap, but we tried to answer her question anyway, with an eye towards those who are struggling a bit more.

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On this week's episode of the podcast, we continue the discussion we had last week about reclaiming your time to pursue your passion and artistic endeavours.

Time is a fixed quantity and you can't really manage it. You can only manage the work you have to do, by assessing priorities, blocking time slots, using systems, and more.

This episode is chock-full of practical tips about this topic that so many struggle so much with, so you sure don't want to miss it.

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We all like to say we're busy and overwhelmed with too many things to do. Managing your time can be really tough, but it becomes easier when you realize that you can't really manage time: all you can do is just managing the work you have to do.

One way to do this is to learn to say no to the constant barrage of demands that work, society, friends, and even ourselves put on us.

We discuss this topic in the latest episode of the podcast. This is the first of two episodes about time management. In the next one, we will give you some practical tips that we use to organize our days.

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In this episode of the podcast, we go deeper into the conversation about deliberate practice and try to answer the question:

Where does one find the motivation and the inspiration to continue practicing, every single day?

We argue that we cannot expect that those two elusive things will somehow float down the river, when we are laying on the grass, watching the clouds in the sky.

Motivation and inspiration don’t materialize out of thin air, but must be nurtured. Finding the resolve to practice every day takes courage and determination. Rituals, routines, and habits can help us dig motivation up from the ground.

Fine some inspirational quotes about motivation, inspiration, and routines below the fold.

“I only write when I’m motivated to. I just happened to be motivated every day at 8am.” – Todd Henry

“It doesn’t matter what you are trying to become better at, if you only do the work when you’re motivated, then you’ll never be consistent enough to become a professional. […] We all have goals that we would like to achieve and dreams that we would like to fulfill, but it doesn’t matter what you are trying to become better at, if you only do the work when it’s convenient or exciting, then you’ll never be consistent enough to achieve remarkable results.” – James Clear

“Inspiration is for amateurs — the rest of us just show up and get to work. And the belief that things will grow out of the activity itself and that you will — through work — bump into other possibilities and kick open other doors that you would never have dreamt of if you were just sitting around looking for a great ‘art idea.’ And the belief that process, in a sense, is liberating and that you don’t have to reinvent the wheel every day. Today, you know what you’ll do, you could be doing what you were doing yesterday, and tomorrow you are gonna do what you did today, and at least for a certain period of time you can just work. If you hang in there, you will get somewhere.” – Chuck Close

“I begin each day of my life with a ritual. I wake up at 5:30 AM, put on my workout clothes, my leg warmers, my sweatshirts, and my hat. I walk outside my Manhattan home, hail a taxi, and tell the driver to take me to the Pumping Iron gym at 91st Street and First Avenue where I work out for two hours. The ritual is not the stretching and weight training I put my body through each morning at the gym. The ritual is the cab. The moment I tell the driver where to go, I have completed the ritual.” – Twyla Tharp

“Mind the gap” audio sample courtesy of bbc.co.uk – © 2018 BBC. Click here to download the original file.

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Does it really take 10,000 hours of practice to get really good at something?

Where do you find the motivation to keep practicing?

Are all kinds of practice equally good and what does it mean to practice deliberately?

We ask ourselves these questions in the latest episode of the podcast.

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Sometimes people believe they are not ready to take the next step towards closing the gap because they lack knowledge. Is that a legitimate concern?

We take our inspiration from the following quote by James Clear and discuss the relationship between knowledge and practice:

“It can be easy to assume that the gap between where you are now and where you want to be in the future is caused by a lack of knowledge. This is why we buy courses on how to start a business or how to lose weight fast or how to learn a new language in three months. We assume that if we knew about a better strategy, then we would get better results. We believe that a new result requires new knowledge. What I’m starting to realize, however, is that new knowledge does not necessarily drive new results. In fact, learning something new can actually be a waste of time if your goal is to make progress and not simply gain additional knowledge. It all comes down to the difference between learning and practicing.”

• Stop Thinking and Start Doing: The Power of Practicing More – James Clear
• Closing the Gap, the Masterclass
• Closing the Gap, a Photography Retreat

“Mind the gap” audio sample courtesy of bbc.co.uk – © 2018 BBC. Click here to download the original file.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Do you really need innate talent and special genes to be an artist or successful in any field?

We discuss this topic in the latest episode of the podcast.

Despite what many people think, the science is pretty clear on this: "the differences between expert performers and normal adults reflect a life-long period of deliberate effort to improve performance in a specific domain."

We also believe that, most of the time, it's not a lack of knowledge that stops people from closing the gap.

So, what's really needed to close the gap? As Ira Glass says, it's doing a lot of work. But doing a lot of mindless work might only serve to reinforce errors and bad habits.

We will delve deeper into what it means to practice in the right way in the next episodes. Stay tuned!

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