Closing The_Gap

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.

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.

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.

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!

The title of this podcast was inspired by Ira Glass, the public radio personality and the host and producer of the show This American Life.

On the topic of the struggles all creatives face, Glass once said the following:

Nobody tells people who are beginners — and I really wish somebody had told this to me — is that all of us who do creative work … we get into it because we have good taste. But it’s like there’s a gap, that for the first couple years that you’re making stuff, what you’re making isn’t so good, OK? It’s not that great. It’s really not that great. It’s trying to be good, it has ambition to be good, but it’s not quite that good. But your taste — the thing that got you into the game — your taste is still killer, and your taste is good enough that you can tell that what you’re making is kind of a disappointment to you.

This disappointment is something that we have experienced and we sometimes still experience because, let’s face it, nobody ever feels completely realized in their creative life.

So we created this podcast to help all those fledgling creatives that perceive the existence of the gap, but have no idea how to close it. All those who lack inspiration, think they have no talent, are holding back, or never seem to be able to start something or to finish it.

We love listening to photography podcasts, but we felt like most podcasts out there talked a lot about gear and technique and very little about topics like:

• What it means to have talent, or a lack of it,
• Finding and developing a personal style,
• Daring to produce something out of the ordinary,
• Evoking emotions and connecting to people through photographs,
• Dealing with criticism,
• Achieving recognition and commercial success.

We created this podcast to fill this void and answer those questions. We hope you will follow us along this journey.

Click here to find more about us.

Just a short announcement to let everyone know that this is the last episode of my photography podcast in its current form.

Starting January 2nd, 2019, this podcast will transform into the Closing The_Gap Podcast, a new show that I will be doing with my friend Fabrizia Costa.

We plan to publish weekly episodes on Wednesdays and we will be covering much the same topics I've been talking about here: how to live a fulfilled life as an artist and how to be successful with photography.

If you are subscribed to this show on Apple Podcasts or one of the other services, like Stitcher, there is nothing you have to do, as you will automatically be subscribed to the new show.

You can also keep up with the show and send us your questions and comments at closingthegap.live. See you there!

In the past, through articles and emails and speeches, most notably in the recent talk I gave at the Out Of Chicago Photography Conference, whose recording you can find here, I mentioned the Helsinki Bus Station Theory, first introduced by Finnish photographer Arno Rafael Minkkinen.

The theory is a metaphor of the life of an artist and of a photographer in particular. The moral of the story is that, if you find something that inspires you and if you want to pursue a specific genre of photography, you should stick to it. You should not jump off the bus, metaphorically speaking, and pursue different avenues just because people tell you that what you've been doing has already been done by others.

To quote Minkkinen:

"Stay on the bus. Stay on the f**king bus. Because if you do, in time, you will begin to see a difference.[..] Suddenly your work starts to get noticed. Now you are working more on your own, making more of the difference between your work and what influenced it. Your vision takes off."

I use this quote in the emails I send to my subscribers (click here if you want to get them too) and a few days ago I received a reply from one of my readers, Bob, who wrote:

"I loved the "Helsinki" article. Is it possible to ride on more than one bus at a time, or more accurately, one big bus and a few minivans? In the 70's, the Sierra Club published reduced format paperback versions of their magnificent color monographs. I was of course overwhelmed by the Ansel Adams photos, but was moved and inspired by the work of Elliot Porter. While I love travel and travel photography, my greatest love and greatest frustration is photographing the "intimate landscape" in the footsteps of Porter. I recently found his two large-format books at a used book store and instinctively bought them. My big bus is "intimate landscapes", and my minivans are travel and street photography."

So here's my reply to Bob.

Yes, you can ride more than one bus at a time. It is OK to pursue different interests and practice different genres at the same time. Artists are supposed to be curious, multifarious and omnivorous.

Look at Picasso. He went through several phases or periods in his artistic development. First he had a “blue period”, then a “rose period”, followed by an “African” period, then he invented cubism, rediscovered classicism, and dabbled with surrealism.

The question you have to ask yourself is not whether it is OK to pursue multiple genres at a time. The question is: What do I want to be known for?

You can certainly do intimate landscapes, travel, and street photography all at the same time, but what image of yourself do you want to project to the outside world? Is it that of the intimate landscape photographer or that of the street and travel photographer?

Another thing to keep in mind is that people are going to put you in a box, whether you like it or not. You can, however, control what box they will put you in.

When Picasso started doing cubism, he consciously chose to do cubist paintings and put himself into that box, for a few years. Nobody could have put him inside the impressionist box. He also did classical paintings at the same time, but cubism was what he was known for and what made Picasso the greatest artist of the 20th century.

If somebody, like Picasso, is known for multiple things, it’s because they focused on one of those things at a time, and on other things at different times in their lives.

If you want to become known in multiple fields or genres, focus on one for a number of years. Stay on that bus. Become known for that one thing and get a following in that field before you try to become known for something else.

I would very much like to know your opinion about this, my dear reader. It’s OK if you disagree, and I will appreciate any kind of feedback you can give via the comments section here.

It's a great pleasure to have back on the show my good friend Fabrizia Costa, whom I had previously interviewed in episode 2, where we talked about the importance of talent.

This time, we had a conversation about superpowers and how to achieve them.

If you wonder what superpowers have to do with photography, listen to the episode to find out or check out http://www.fabriziacosta.com/superpowers.html.

I was inspired to record this post by reading a post on Facebook by a friend of mine, who recently wrote:

“I belong to a LOT of photography groups here on FB. I thought they would help me to become better at my art. Really all they’ve done is make me want to quit. If you haven’t noticed I haven’t been posting a lot(well, except from the gym because that’s been fun). I’ll still be taking photos and doing shoots but I’m no longer going to pursue this as my sole profession. I gave it a good try.”

This is what I replied to her, slightly edited:

“It’s sad that you are quitting, but understandable. This profession is not easy for anyone. I haven’t given up on my day job yet precisely because of this.

However, if I may respectfully add my own two cents, maybe you made a mistake in thinking that Facebook groups (and Facebook in general) could give you recognition, inspiration, peer encouragement, customers, or anything you were hoping of getting out of them.

If you are very very selective and proactive and careful, then maybe you can find a group of peers that can give you guidance and support, but random groups that everyone can join? Forget about it.

Also finding customers on Facebook is next to impossible. If you want to reach potential customers, you got to find them somewhere else, unless you have very deep pockets, spend a lot of money on ads and have an extremely optimized sales funnel to send people to.

I mostly use Facebook to share the things I put on my various websites. I know Facebook shares won’t attract much traffic, but they don’t cost me anything, so I just do them and if I get a handful of visitors, I won’t complain.

I hope you will still be doing photography professionally, even on a part-time basis, because your work is great.

If you can pursue that on weekends and grow your business from a small group of clients that are willing to refer you, that would be the way to go, in my humble opinion.

I am sure there are gazillions of customers that would want to pay you to have their portrait taken. You just have to reach out to them, via word of mouth, local advertising, partnerships with local businesses, creating great content for your website, and all the things that will make people know, like, and trust you.

In short, everything BUT social media.

I know you can make it.”