The thing that’s kept me fascinated and consumed for more than 20 years now…
Everyone who gets into photography pretty much starts out near “zero” and quickly learns a few things that make them feel like photography is something they can do.
Then, roughly RIGHT THEN…..there is a DIVERGENCE. A few people continue to learn, steadily, if not quickly, getting better and gaining knowledge.
But from RIGHT THEN, a much larger group of people more or less STOP learning and stop getting better……they plateau very early, and while they may gain small bits of knowledge over time, their trajectory is never going to remotely approach that of the other group.
What is that THING that happens at the point of divergence?
This focus of mine wasn’t originally about photography…I started studying how we learn long before I got into pictures and cameras. But what I found in photography, was a PERFECT ecosystem where I could very clearly see people take the two different paths.
There isn’t just one reason for the divergence. Some people take up photography, and then lose interest, for example. Or aren’t highly motivated. Or it’s not their PRIMARY interest. Or their way of thinking just doesn’t align well with this discipline.
But it turns out, that even for people who aren’t naturally built for photography, there is ONE THING, if they’re motivated, that can almost assure they’ll take the higher trajectory….it’s a thing that happens
RIGHT AT THE POINT of DIVERGENCE.
And it’s not something we DO. It’s something we AVOID doing.
The key to becoming really good at photography…..or MOST THINGS…..is to avoid flipping the switch in your brain where you assign YOURSELF to be the EXPERT who knows when you’re an expert.
The sentence all by itself sounds absurd. Because the IDEA is absurd.
You can’t be the person who decides if you’re qualified to decide if you’re qualified. You have to SUBMIT to the idea that there are REAL WORLD experts that are NOT YOU, who are qualified to look at your skill level and your level of knowledge and decide FOR YOU where you are on the scale.
What happens to so many people….is they learn a few things about photography….only a TINY FRACTION of the entire photography system……and mistakenly think they’re now qualified to know how much they know.
And because they think they’ve LEARNED…..they stop learning.
It’s that one thing. Flipping their OWN switch on the “I’m an expert” circuit to “ON.”
That prevents most of us from ever becoming an ACTUAL EXPERT.
