10,000 Hours?

According to the theory first expounded in 1993 by Dr K. Anders Ericsson, et al. of Florida State University, and made popular by Malcolm Gladwell in his books “Outliers” (2008) and “Bounce: The Myth of Talent and the Power of Practice” (2011), 10,000 hours of deliberate practice is the minimum required to achieve true mastery in any field of endeavour. My goal is to become an expert photographer. So to do this will require 10,000 hours of deliberate practice in photography.

I love Malcolm Gladwell’s books and would recommend them to anyone. However, if you really want to see the original academic paper as published in Psychological Review (journal of the American Psychological Association) you can download it here “The role of deliberate practice in the acquisition of expert performance.”

What counts as an hour’s deliberate practice in the art of photography?

Deliberate practice is defined by Ericson, Gladwell and others as time spent trying to improve one’s performance.

For me deliberate practice in the art of photography is time spent trying to make better images than I have achieved previously. It is not limited to, nor does it necessarily include all, time spent taking photos. This is slightly arbitrary, but I have decided:

… to include time spent:

Preparing for photography
On site when I am setting up, shooting, or thinking about getting the best shots
Post processing
Attending lectures, watching YouTube clips, and reading about photography or art in general
Attending photographic exhibitions, RPS events, and art galleries
2 hours per week at the Stoke Poges Photographic Club
Writing this blog – photographic content only (upto an hour per day)
About an hour per day communicating on social media about this blog.

… and not include time spent:

On repetitive tasks – see below – which I plan not to do anyway
Travelling (other than time on a train or plane doing stuff that does count)
Shopping, even for a new camera
Pursuing business opportunities from photography (old habits die hard)
Doing techy stuff: setting up this blog, the surrounding website and supporting social media
Fixing my camera, computer or other kit when it breaks.

Repetitive tasks: for example, if one were taking passport photos, the first few that you take, you might adjust the set-up or lighting. So this would count as deliberate practice, as one is learning how to do it and improving. However, beyond the first few the learning and personal improvement component of the task quickly diminishes to the point where no deliberate practice is taking place.

Criticism of the 10,000 Hour Principle

There are a lot of silly comments on the web about only counting the 1/250 of a second required to take a photograph. The more grown-up conversations include all the time involved in image making, and I have defined what I intend to include above.

Don Giannatti wrote a blog post in DIYPhotography, “10,000 Hours will not make you a good photographer“. In this his main tenant seems to be that: “Practice doesn’t necessarily make perfect, it makes automatic. Automatically playing it wrong will not be a triumph if you are working on a Beethoven Sonata, and will make it nearly impossible to correct it without a struggle.”

I think this criticism is easily countered by the argument that, it’s about constantly struggling to improve. In his book, “Creativity, the psychology of discovery and invention”, the psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, defines the process of mastery, as working within a “domain” whilst constantly receiving feedback from the “field” (established experts within that domain), until one receives the recognition of one’s peers. This is entirely consistent with the principle of 10,000 hours of deliberate practice.

On a completely different tack. A commenter on Don’s post pointed out that: “There are many young, good and talented photographers around to prove this [10,000 hour theory] wrong.” This is a compelling argument, to which I currently (at hour zero) have no answer. However, (at hour 2,406), I now understand that the evidence suggests that Mastery depends of consistency of results; young prodigies have been known to create great work but struggle to do so consistently. Consistent delivery of excellence is where 10,000 hours deliberate practice is required.

Other Writers on 10,000 Hours of Photography

Michael Gordon: 10,000 Hours

10,000 Hours of Photography – she’s doing the same as me, from a slightly different perspective, and is a couple of year’s ahead.

Leonard Goh: “Applying the 10,000 Hour Rule to Photography” in Black star rising: Art of Photography.

My 10,000 hours: Journal