Mar 23 2010
Creativity
I’ve been trying to find a new creative outlet for a few months. I’m a bit of a hobby freak and have turned my hands to quite a lot of things over the years – from origami to marquetry to ornithology – but I have been struggling for a while to find something new which really captured my interest. Watching the recent series of the wonderful Mastercrafts on BBC has given me a new perspective on why this might be, and a desire to take something beyond ‘I can do that’ to ‘I am actually quite good at that’.
I think Mastercrafts has been a great programme for two main reasons: it’s wonderful to watch people talking about and doing something they are passionate about, and it’s also nice to remember every now and then the satisfaction that comes from working hard to acquire deep knowledge and true craft. Too much today focuses on the short-term, do-it-well-enough-to-get-by ideal; on the ability that technology and affluent society has given us to buy in pseudo-skill.
An example? I went on a ‘snake photography day’ a couple of years ago. The day was held on heathland in Dorset where snakes are found – all three main UK species if my herpetological knowledge is reliable. I was very excited that we would be shown around the heath, learning about the habitat of the snakes and, perhaps, being lucky enough to see and photograph them. Nothing is more thrilling than observing animals in their native habitat, particularly a habitat that has suffered the depletion that heathland has in the UK over the years. The reality was disappointing. There were two snake-handlers with us on the day who had captive snakes and lizards which they manipulated for us, positioning them to get us the perfect photos of these creatures in their natural environment. Instead of a day learning valuable knowledge and field skills everyone ended up with about 2000 almost identical shots of the same snakes. Instead of having to combine fieldcraft and photographic ability, the most we had to do was make sure the handler’s fingers weren’t in shot each time. A number of people on the trip were regulars who had also done a similar thing with tigers, wolves and bears at the local zoo, although by the look of the gear they had you’d have thought they were off to Kenya on a photoshoot for National Geographic for a month.
Another example? My local fishing shop staff often tell of people who come in and spend upward of £2000 in one go to get everything they need to start fishing. They then spend a few weekends on waters that are overstocked, catching fish that are on first-name terms with most of the anglers who fish there, then sell their gear the first time they have a blank session.
Now, I’m not saying for one minute that people shouldn’t approach things in this way, or that all people who invest a lot of money in a hobby have no real talent. And I’m certainly not saying that the purists are somehow more entitled to the hobby than others – those who are still using split-cane rods and centrepin reels to catch pure, wild fish, or those who are stalking animals in tweed suits and deerstalkers, taking photos of them on bakelite cameras and developing them in their own dark rooms. In my view the extremes are just as bad as one another, and people at both ends can be equally damaging when they offer advice to newcomers on internet fora and mailing lists.
What I am saying is that you don’t need great gear to do well, you need to understand the craft of your hobby and have the right gear to do what you want to do. If you want to take photos for glossy magazines and billboards then you probably do need some high-end gear. If you want to compete at world-class level you need the right gear to fish alongside the pros. But don’t think that having the gear for one minute means you can take those photos or win that championship. If you take the time to learn the craft, to really appreciate what you need to do with the tools and to be able to get the best out of lower-down-the-range gear, then you might just stand a chance of succeeding when you do get your hands on the right gear. There’s a famous saying with pro photographers when asked the question, “Wow, what exposure time did you use to get that shot?” – “1/8 of a second and 35 years”. You won’t get great shots by using the same gear as the pros or by using the same settings as the pros. Photography is as much to do with gear and settings as great literature is to do with spelling. You can only get really good at something by investing time, passion and application in the craft.
An illustrative anecdote? When I was a kid I was working with my dad in a school over the holidays. There was a horrible little drum kit there that I banged around on for hours on the first day – much to the delight of my Dad. It was a truly horrible sounding thing that was a good few steps away from being usable. On day two one of my Dad’s mates was working with us too. He was a jazz drummer who played every now and then in clubs and pubs. At lunchtime he sat behind the kit and, after a few exploratory taps and tests, proceeded to produce some wonderful sounds out of it.
With that in mind, I’ve started to practice more on my guitar, learning a little music theory, strengthening my fingers and listening to people I can learn from. I have everything I need to get as far as I want to go with music, the only thing I need to invest this time, is time.