Ten Thousand Hours Photography

10,000 Hours Deliberate Practice Learning the Art of Photography

Other than Photography

The purpose of this page is to let you know about me as a person, and what I do apart from my 10,000 hour photography project.

Lovely wife, dog, no kids = spare time, slightly obsessive personality, bit of a geek, but also run and go to the gym (OK, some geeks do this too), play golf, have a good set of friends, do all the usual social things apart from watching sport (although always grateful for tickets to Internationals at Twickenham), like good food, fine wine, and mix a gin & tonic that would anesthetize a dinosaur.

To indulge my inner geek, I’ve decided to share some of my top 10s as of 2017 …

Books:

  1. “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People” – Stephen Covey
  2. “Tuesdays with Morrie” – Mitch Albom
  3. “Outliers” – Malcolm Gladwell
  4. “Quarantine” – Jim Crace
  5. “Creativity, the psychology of discovery and invention” – Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
  6. “Godel, Esher and Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid” – Douglas Hofstadter
  7. “The Fabric of Reality” – David Deutsch
  8. “Plumdog” – Emma Chichester Clark
  9. “Mind over Matter (The epic crossing of the antarctic continent)” – Sir Ranulph Fiennes
  10. “The Jeeves Omnibus” – P G Wodehouse

Films:

  1. Pulp Fiction
  2. A Fish Called Wanda
  3. Gathering Storms
  4. Locke
  5. A Knights Tale
  6. Dinner for One
  7. The Godfather
  8. Leon
  9. I Daniel Blake
  10. Blade Runner

Art

  1. Pablo Picasso – cubist work, e.g., Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, etc.
  2. David Hockney – “Joiners” – Photo montages
  3. Gustav Klimpt – The Kiss, The Woman in Gold, etc
  4. Piet Mondrian – work post 1930, e.g., the Composition II in Red, Blue and Yellow
  5. Salvador Dali – surrealist work including The Persistence of Memory
  6. Rene Magritte – surrealist works such as The Son of Man
  7. Georgia O’Keeffe – Flower Paintings
  8. Paul Klee – Colour theorist work such as Castle and Sun
  9. Edward Hopper – Nighthawks
  10. Edvard Munch – The Scream

Classical Music:

  1. JS Bach – Toccata & Fugue in D Minor
  2. Maurice Ravel – Bolero
  3. Sergei Prokofiev – Dance of the Knights from Romeo & Juliet
  4. Antonio Vivaldi – 4 Seasons: Spring
  5. Tchaikovsky – The Death Scene – Swan Lake
  6. Ludwig van Beethoven – Symphony 9 “Ode to Joy” – particularly as performed by the Opera Babes
  7. Carmin Burana/ Carl Orff – O Fortuna
  8. Karl Jenkins – Quirk: Allegretto from Palladio
  9. Sergei Rachmaninov – Piano Concerto No. 3
  10. Max Bruch – Violin Concerto No. 1 in G Minor

(Slightly more) Contemporary Music:

  1. Pulp – Common People
  2. Shivaree – Goodbye Moon (from Kill Bill)
  3. Ami Winehouse – Rehab (Pharoahe Monche remix)
  4. 5 Year’s Time – Noah and the Whale
  5. Killing me Softly – The Fugees
  6. Adele – Make You Feel My Love
  7. David Bowie – Life on Mars?
  8. Plain White Tees – Delila
  9. Eminem – Stan
  10. Van Morrison – Brown Eyed Girl

As mentioned before, the above are quickly assembled lists of what I consider to be my favourites at the time of starting my 10,000 hour journey of art education.

These lists will, I hope, change.