Friday, during my lunchtime walk, I discovered a new camera store here in Ann Arbor, Michigan.
I walked in, and it had the usual suspects of a camera shop: new tripods, fancy bags and straps, a bunch of new Fuji and Nikon and Canon cameras sitting on shelves. And, a wall full of film.
Because there are fewer and fewer places selling honest to goodness film these days, trying to snag a roll was random and difficult. If I didn’t want Kodak instant cameras or Fuji Superia, I was stuck using Amazon or B&H – especially for my favorites, Agfa Vista and Ilford HP5.
But CameraMall had those and more. Medium format film! Kodak Ektar! Weird Ilford film I had never heard of! My beloved Agfa! It was like a candy store. As a bonus, they also develop 35mm film.
It felt really, really good to plunk down the $10 for two rolls of film, knowing that I had a local place to shop from. They benefit (yay, camera stores!), I benefit, and somewhere down the line the photography industry benefits.
And really, the film costs the same in store as it does online, I get to geek out with the guy behind the counter, and it’s an excuse to get out of the office and go for a walk.
Find your local place, if you have one, and shop from their film selection (or memory cards, or tripods, or whatever). Order some prints. Check out their used gear section. I know ordering online is super handy, but the benefits of shopping local are numerous.
I’ll bet that after you do, like me, you’ll feel better about doing it.
The show was notable because Gord Downie, the Hip’s lead singer, was diagnosed with terminal brain cancer earlier this year. Saturday night’s show, broadcast on the CBC to a third of Canada’s citizens, could be the Hip’s last ever – capping a 30-year career.
Imagine that in America. What U.S.-based band would garner a national broadcast on its last show ever? Bruce Springsteen, maybe? What modern music act can unite a country on what night in the way the Hip did this weekend? It’s amazing when you think about it.
I have a great history with the band. My friend Chris took me to a Hip show in the summer of 2000 at DTE Energy Music Theater (Pine Knob to those who remember the good ol’ days), north of Detroit. Since then, I’ve seen the Hip more than a dozen times: in Detroit, in Grand Rapids, in Sarnia, in Toronto, in Windsor (photo above). Their country and my own, I’ve seen them on almost every tour since 2000, sometimes catching them on several dates on a given tour.
Saturday night was emotional for me. It was especially difficult watching Gord, obviously frail and tired, giving it his all. He was spent emotionally, physically, and perhaps even creatively. But he went out with a bang. Here was a guy who has dealt with terminal cancer, on the last night of a country-spanning tour, deliver a three-hour performance in front of his hometown crowd and his nation. That’s grit.
Not that I think about death a lot, but watching my musical heroes pass away over the years makes me think about mortality, and the limited time we have.
It’s hard not to dive into the live-like-you-were-dying cliché here, but hear me out.
What would you do, artistically, if you knew you were on borrowed time?
And what’s holding you back from doing that, right now?
I try not to be morbid about this stuff. But it’s hard, having kids, not thinking about being taken away suddenly, and what kind of situation I’d leave behind. The unexpected happens all the time. Any of us could get a diagnosis that changes everything.
We can’t think about this stuff every day. That would be paralyzing in a way. Then again, that’s the whole point of the your-life-changes-after-you-get-the-news storyline – hardly anyone young-ish sees death coming. Saturday’s concert was a good reminder.
I mean, if a guy with terminal brain cancer can hit the road with the band one more time, travel the country and give it his all every night in the name of art and performance and duty, surely I can get that undone project completed. Right?
Watching Gord’s exhausted face melt into anguish at the end of a barn-burning song? Yeah, there aren’t too many excuses left after seeing that.
We know how expensive it is to rent studio space, and that it can be especially difficult to justify the price when it’s for your own passion project. But if it’s a project that excites you, that drags you out of bed at the crack of dawn and keeps you up late at night, we want to give you the opportunity to create it.
BYO camera? Free?
Not many excuses now to not do that thing you want to do, New Yorkers.
Kudos to VSCO. They’re providing platform after platform for photographers (and “”creatives””) to do their thing. It’s fun to see them stretch and grow beyond film-looking presets for Lightroom (that I still enjoy and use).
I’d give anything for a space like this in my area. My next project is dying for a location to shoot some portraits. I don’t need equipment – just space.
It’s enough to make you think about building that bunker out in the backyard and waiting the whole thing out.
Artists, musicians, religious leaders, and poets will help us try to make sense of it all, over time. In the meantime, there are photographers on the front lines of these terrible events, witnessing first-hand the terrible things that humans do to each other.
As they’re doing that, try to get out and capture something beautiful, while there’s still time. While it’s still there.
I’d take an old Macintosh, either from eBay or an e-waste drive, plug it in, fire it up, and fix whatever was wrong.
I’d add RAM, or install a new PRAM battery. I’d clean out the vents and get the gunk off the keyboard. Make sure the mouse worked. Install the latest version of the operating system. Try out a different hard drive.
This went on for three or four years. Take a random Friday night, put on The Verve Pipe’s Villains, grab a six pack, and tinker. And then I’d write about it.
I loved it.
And then I walked away.
In its place, I picked up a new hobby, and slowly let the former one slip into the past, like Saturday morning cartoons or homecoming dances.
This happens to lots of us. Often, several times during our lives. Maybe we outgrow our hobbies after a while, or situations change in life. We get married, start families, switch jobs. Our priorities change.
I used to feel bad about leaving my Mac hobby behind. I still love tinkering, and I still play with my old PowerMac and Newtons.
But just like I left behind playing Magic: The Gathering, and staying up late trying to beat Super Mario Bros. 3, I switched gears.
It’s okay to try on new things, and leave old things behind. Maybe photography won’t be “my thing” forever, and that’s fine, too.
If you’re well-connected and well-known, this may not be such an issue for you. Your art may already have an audience. But if you’re a first-timer like me, this audience stuff matters. I didn’t want to make something and have it flop.
In other words, who do I hope sees this?
Now, that doesn’t affect the actual portraits I make. Those are all mine, with no thought on what’s “marketable.” Style, subject, composition – that’s all me.
But when I bundle all these things together, I do think about who will be interested. When I’m done, who do I send this to first?
Part of me feels like a “sellout” for thinking that way. After all, should it matter who sees what I make? Who cares if it’s “marketable?”
For one: me. And for two: Many of my projects have a community focus. If I’m highlighting local artists, say, or people with fun hobbies, then I want to make sure those people are recognized by their communities, big or small.
I get some benefit out of that, sure. But so do the people I showcase. “Here,” the project says, “look at these folks who are just like you and do something interesting.”
For the portrait project, my audience was both my hometown and the artistic community within Jackson. For my Albion Anagama documentary, the audience was the Albion community and the ceramics community, plus alumni from Albion College.
Yes, the stuff I make matters to me, first and foremost.
“You should bring something into the world that wasn’t in the world before. It doesn’t matter what that is. It doesn’t matter if it’s a table or a film or gardening — everyone should create. You should do something, then sit back and say, “I did that.”
Just for fun, here’s a behind-the-scenes portrait editing session in Lightroom I put together using a photo from my Artists In Jackson project, featuring painter Colleen Peterson.
This is a simplified editing process, but I don’t spend a ton of time on each photo. I have my process down pretty well.
Contrast, exposure, sharpening, and VSCO. Just that simple.
Now that I’m a few weeks removed from launching my portrait project, Artists In Jackson, I thought it’d be helpful to share a few thoughts on the process – maybe for others thinking about tackling a self-published photo book.
I broke this down into sections, because there is a lot to think about and digest.
To Self Publish or Not To Self Publish
This one was easy for me: self publish!
It’s so easy these days to make and publish a photo book. There are vendors begging you to print with them. I get coupons all the time – 25% off, 75% off, a free book print to try out, etc.
My project was design- and text-intensive, so I needed a specific vendor to get my book finished. But if you just want to make a photo book, there are tons of options. If you have a Macintosh computer, Apple bundles Photos and a book-printing option as a default. VSCO has a super nice (and pricey) option. There’s My Publisher, MPix, Pinhole Press, and Blurb (my option).
You could go the professional publishing route, but chance are, if you’re reading this, that whole world is a mystery to you, too. And besides, who wants a box full of books gathering dust in their basement? Print on demand!
Print On Demand (Kind Of)
Speaking of which, I highly recommend print-on-demand services to keep costs and risk low. To a point.
Print-on-demand publishing means someone goes to a website or storefront and orders your book, and then it gets printed and shipped to them. This avoids the basement-book scenario. You don’t have to worry about inventory or unsold merchandise.
Now, I did it kind of half and half. I wanted an initial small press run of books delivered to me because I wanted to sign and customize them for the first batch of supporters. This involved a small bit of risk, because if I couldn’t sell that complete set of printed books, I’m stuck with the entire bill.
I had enough confidence to buy the initial batch, however, and once that runs out, I will send customers to the Blurb storefront to buy their on-demand copy.
Think of it as offering something special for your die-hard supporters, while still keeping the risk manageable. And through a service like Blurb, you can sell your book through Amazon, potential increasing your audience size.
Thinking About Your Audience
Who are you aiming for? What’s your customer base? Who would buy this thing you’re going to make? Who’s going to care?
It could be the marketing/communications professional in me, but one of the first things I thought about was my audience. I knew that if I photographed a large enough number of artists I could grow my audience base. How? Artists have friends and family, spouses, proud grandmothers, co-workers, etc. Each artist will tell their fan base, and word will spread.
Also, because my project was so community focused, the Jackson community itself became a target audience. If you care about Jackson, or you care about the arts community, you’re a potentially-interested person.
If you’re well-connected and well-known, this may not be such an issue for you. Your art may already have an audience. But if you’re a first-timer like me, this audience stuff matters. I didn’t want to make something and have it flop.
It also doesn’t decrease your artsy-ness by thinking about this kind of thing. If you make something great, and no one knows about it, and you want it to reach people, have you succeeded or failed? Or somewhere in between?
My project had a goal (increase awareness about artistic talent in our community), and so it had to have an audience that cared.
The M-Word
Marketing. I’ll start by saying that whether you like it or not, if you want your work to reach an audience, you have to have a bit of marketing involved. Sometimes, you have to be a megaphone.
For me, my marketing plan was comprehensive and multi-channeled. I used the website, Facebook, social media, email, and personal outreach to get the word out about Artists In Jackson. From there, the network effect kicked in. I had 15 artists who helped me reach a larger audience, and the artistic community took their message and spread it even farther.
I set it up in stages. First, I teased the project with a launch page and an email sign-up form. The artists knew what I was doing, but no one else did, so there was some mystery involved.
Then I published the About page on the website, and sent people there. “Look!” I said. “I have a project that I’m finishing up, and here are the basics!” That’s when the social media part came into play – I had something I could point to and share.
The landing page and about page helped me gather email addresses for my mailing list. These folks were the die-hards, the special ones, who bought in to the project. They got weekly updates from me, with little sneak peeks of the book’s progress.
From there, I published the Meet the Artists page to announce who was in the project. Now people could see faces attached to this project. I did this a week before the book launch to get people really talking. It helped with awareness, because this is the stage where the artists could kick their promotional messages into high gear.
And then it was a slow, steady rollout of the products: book pre-sale, book general public sale, eBook pre-sale, eBook general sale, magazine pre-sale, etc. This gave me a month of weekly promotional messages that gave people a specific way of supporting the project. The book begat the eBook begat the magazine. Boom, boom, boom.
I’ll add that groups like the local arts and cultural alliance and the chamber got word of the project and used their communication channels to talk about it. On and on it went, and the audience grew.
Why An Ebook and A Magazine
Easy: Affordability, and access. Not everyone can afford an $89 art book, so the magazine was a way for people to still enjoy a physical piece and saving some money.
It was a pain to layout the magazine. The size was different than the book, and it makes you reformat the pagination and design. But luckily the hard work – writing the stories, sizing the photos, etc. – was already done when I finished the book.
For the eBook, it was more of a way to experiment with the format. I had a chance to play with the iBook Store (and learn all its peculiarities and rules), which will help me on future projects. And I wanted a portable format for those on-the-go tablet folks.
As a multimedia professional, it just made sense to have different formats for Artists In Jackson. It increased the workload, yes, but I feel like it increased the audience size, too. Call it democratic self publishing.
Inventory and Mailing
My fear, as stated above, was that my basement would become a warehouse for these books. So while I split the difference and ordered some inventory, I kept it manageable.
The United States Postal Service (USPS) helped things by offering free mailing supplies (did you know?) and a great online service to order postage labels. It reminded me of the old days on eBay where you had to become a mailing service expert to move your merchandise.
I ordered 20 padded envelopes (free!) from USPS, and when a book order came in I’d buy a postage label, print it out, stuff the envelope with the book, and slap the label on. I’m lucky in that we have a post office here on the campus where I work, so I could just drop off the packages whenever I wanted.
USPS makes it easy to research shipping costs, too, so you know how much to charge your customers. This was vital – I had no idea what postage would be until I looked it up. Free envelopes, calculate the shipping, and send away. Really easy stuff.
Why USPS and not, say, FedEx? It’s totally political. I think our mail system should be run by the federal government, and I try to support the postage system – flawed and unfriendly as it may be – whenever I can.
Online Store
This was a fun part because I had the right e-commerce site. Gumroad is great to work with, and I got their name from @bleeblu after purchasing his eBook. Their markup is very reasonable, and I love the stats and metrics they offer. It became kind of addicting to see a new email from Gumroad pop into my inbox, telling me I just sold another book. It was very helpful to see where my sales came from (website? email? social media?), too.
For the eBook, Gumroad did all the hosting and handled all the downloading. They also make sending mail tracking numbers and receipts super easy. Gumroad is really made for digital goods, but I found they handled physical goods just as well.
For individual photo prints, I use Society6. They take care of all the printing and shipping, and I get to set my profit amount for each print. I don’t make much from prints, but I wanted to offer them to family members and the artists at an affordable price.
After my initial 25 book order runs out, I’m going to switch my online store to Blurb’s version. It’s not the prettiest, but it will serve my needs for those print-on-demand orders.
And everything – the project, the stores, everything – is hosted with grace and beauty by Squarespace. I can’t recommend them enough for creative projects and professionals.
What’s Next
Next, I’m focusing on getting the word out about the project, either through media outlets or art blogs. This is a step-by-step, methodical process: emailing contacts, submitting press releases, knowing who to get a hold of, etc. But I enjoy the work.
I’m also chatting with folks about hosting some events in town to bring the art and artists together. This area is totally out of my comfort zone. I am not an event organizer.
So I pulled in a few of the artists from the project who are experience in events (Hi, Kaiti and Colleen) to help me think through the logistics. Where to have it? Who to invite? Sell tickets? Have food? How to promote? Etc.
I’m also thinking about some speaking engagements, through local service clubs and the museum, to give some backstory on the project.
The big rush at the end of this year is to get the book in people’s hands and get the word out. In 2016, I’ll be focusing on the social and event aspects of the project.
Final Thoughts
Finally, the project was super fun, and a ton of work. It’s not just the photographing and interviewing that takes time. It’s the writing the profiles, editing the photos, sizing them according to the media, building the website, developing the marketing plan, designing the book – on and on. It was five solid months of hard work and late nights.
But. I’m super proud of how it turned out, and the feedback and support has been great. It’s also fun for me to do this stuff.
I tend to be risk-averse, both financially and in life. I didn’t want to go into this project blind and blow a bunch of money on something that I can’t recoup. Yes, risk is a part of any artistic project, but my ability to tolerate risk is low. So at every step in the project, I made sure that there would be creative and financial payoff.
At the least, I just wanted to cover my costs. This was not a money-making scheme. Far from it. If I calculated the time put in to the payout, I’m probably in the red.
That’s what a hobby is, though. It’s a big time and money sink that’s worth all of that as long as you enjoy yourself. With Artists In Jackson, I had the satisfaction of knowing that not only was I exercising my photography muscles, but I was doing something worthwhile for the community.
I did this a while back on portraits, but here’s a little behind-the-scenes on how I process my photos in Lightroom.
Let’s take a photo from the Heidelberg Project in Detroit – blending a few favorite subjects of mine: an abandoned house, public art in an urban setting, good mix of light and deep shadows.
Here’s a before and after. The photo was captured with a Canon 7D and 24-70mm f/2.8 Sigma lens. The framing of the brick pillar and the burned black ceiling, with the shaft of light streaming down the stairs, made for an interesting scene.
I start with exposure. Is the frame too dark? Too bright? How about white balance. After adjusting those in Lightroom, I pick my VSCO present. These days, it’s Film 05′s Kodak Ektar 100. That particular film setting has a lot of options, but I usually stick with the default, or play with the Contrast+ setting.
I like Ektar because of its high-contrast, green-tinted-shadows look. It’s not afraid to let the shadows go completely to black, and it’s a warmer film tone. But that’s just the start.
From there I’ll probably add a bit more punch in the contrast setting, drop the highlights a bit to let more detail in the bright spots, and drop the blacks down to give it that really contrasty look. Shadows are my friend.
Depending on the image, I’ll also reduce the saturation a bit. Adding contrast makes the colors pop a bit too much for my liking (those shoes might be a bit too blue for my taste).
Increase the sharpening a tad (usually to the 30 mark, with some masking to only sharpen the edges), maybe bump the clarity (only for non-people photos), and increase the color noise reduction if I have to. Peeking at the shadows and dark spots in the photos lets me know if there is color noise.
Hit the “Remove Chromatic Aberration” toggle if I need to, and do any kind of lens or perspective corrections if I have to. And then I’ll add a bit of a vignette and, especially for VSCO film packs, reduce the grain level. My settings rarely have grain going anywhere above 20-30.
As a last touch, I’ll sharpen little details with the adjustment brush, spot remove anything that seems out of place, and crop a bit.
That’s it. Nothing complicated or fussy. I’ll spend a very short amount of time on a photo, and bring it into Photoshop to do any kind of heavy lifting. Getting it most of the way there in camera is the important part, allowing me to make the styling adjustments as needed.
Hello Dave. I just recently created an account on Tumblr and stumbling through different photography blogs I’ve noticed that many people post pictures that have a certain style to them, one I haven’t really seen before. The style I would be referring to I noticed in your pictures “Sunrise on the Mill Pond – Concord, Michigan” and “Catching the Dew – Albion, Michigan”. I was just curious as to how you achieve this look, if it is achieved through Ps or Lr, or if it depends on the type of camera.
Those two (catching dew, and the sunrise photo) are two of my favs from the fall, and really a product of the right time of year, the right sunrises, and a healthy dose of custom VSCO editing in Lightroom. The macro lens helped, too, to really get in there and capture the details on the dew shot. And don’t quote me, but I think I used VSCO Film 03 for both. Thanks!
This is increasingly why I’m spending less and less time on certain social media sites. Why consume others’ experiences when you can be busy making your own?
I like to make things. I like to be busy, and creative, and knee-deep in a photo or writing project.
Some people specialize in ideas, constantly scheming, iterating, finessing. I prefer doing. I don’t know what makes me want to make, but often the impulse strikes without warning. If I don’t satiate it immediately, it becomes a dull ache that lingers all day.
Trying to talk somebody out of the stuff that they enjoy in life is like trying to talk them out of their faith or their sexuality. It’s a pointless exercise that can never be anything but acrimonious and will only highlight unnecessary amounts of difference about things that ultimately don’t really matter. Buy the steak you like, worship the god you love, neck with the people that you treasure and don’t worry about the numbers.
I realize that every child makes a similar pronouncement. A fireman. A policeman. A lawyer. A doctor. A superhero. And I realize that I’m far from being a full-time writer paying the bills completely through the force of my fingertips. But how often can an adult look back and see a moment like that, so defining and seemingly prophetic, and find echoes of their present within it?
For me, it was an old typewriter my grandmother picked up at a yard sale, an wooden pirate ship model that I got from who-knows-where, and a vivid imagination steeped in Saturday morning cartoons, hours playing with action figures, and a deep need to make something.
I would write these stories about a pirate ship captain and his crew, and all their adventures as they sailed the seven seas. Writing was huge for me, and as far back as junior high I remembered that wherever I ended up, it had to have something to do with writing.
My sophomore year English teacher, Mrs. Wiley, told me I had a “journalistic style” to my writing. So naturally I took that to mean I should be on the newspaper staff, and the next year I did just that. A year later, I was editor of our high school newspaper. Four years later: my college newspaper.
It’s not always clear, especially when you’re a teenager, what you should be doing with your life. Sometimes you need little pushes in a direction that’s not always clear to you at the time.
It’s still like that for me now, but it was especially true then. My biggest concerns in high school were working after school, band, and girls (probably in reverse order) – not what I wanted to do with the rest of my life.
But looking back, it’s easy to see the direction my life was heading, and it all started with that old typewriter and model pirate ship.
I’m an amateur soccer player, an amateur cook, an amateur skier, designer, racecar driver, and flyfisherman. And I’m happy to be an amateur at all of those things. Actually I LOVE being an amateur at all of those things – it allows me to dabble, make a ton of mistakes, goof around, drop the ball, not care when something else might be distracting me etc.
Being an amateur at those things means I can be comfortable. It’s safe. There is no fear of success or failure.
Laying out the design of a page or a flyer so it looks like a pro did it takes about ten times as much work as merely using the template Microsoft builds in for free, and the message is almost the same…
Except it’s not. Of course not. The message is not the same.
The last ten percent is the signal we look for, the way we communicate care and expertise and professionalism. If all you’re doing is the standard amount, all you’re going to get is the standard compensation. The hard part is the last ten percent, sure, or even the last one percent, but it’s the hard part because everyone is busy doing the easy part already.
This is what makes what I do paradoxically enjoyable and frustrating. I love concentrating on the stuff that no one else cares about because I care intensely about it. Things, little things, do matter.
On the flip side, I encounter people who are template humpers and think good enough is good enough. They have no respect for, or are totally ignorant of, that last 10 percent – and have no interest in it. It’s the interest part that’s frustrating.
For some, Microsoft Word is good enough, and Times New Roman is good enough, and an photo stolen from Google Images is good enough. For me, the fun is in tackling the good enough and making it even a tiny bit better.
Even if I never approach something a tiny bit better (and often times I don’t), the pursuit is, in of itself, a worthy goal.
Did you ever see that episode of Gilligan’s Island where they almost get off the island and then Gilligan messes up and then they don’t? I saw that one. I saw that one a lot when I was growing up. And every half-hour that I watched that was a half an hour I wasn’t posting at my blog or editing Wikipedia or contributing to a mailing list. Now I had an ironclad excuse for not doing those things, which is none of those things existed then. I was forced into the channel of media the way it was because it was the only option. Now it’s not, and that’s the big surprise. However lousy it is to sit in your basement and pretend to be an elf, I can tell you from personal experience it’s worse to sit in your basement and try to figure if Ginger or Mary Ann is cuter.
Something is better than nothing, says Clay Shirkey, especially when “in the U.S., we spend 100 million hours every weekend, just watching the ads.”
I don’t hate TV. In fact, there’s a lot about it I love. “The Office,” “Mad Men,” football – I don’t get much done when these programs are on TV. Sometimes that’s great. My mind can stand to have a few minutes of down-time each week. So can yours.
But more and more, I find myself using that leisure time (the “social surplus” of time, Shirkey calls it) to do something productive: write a blog entry, or make a web site, or help out my recycling group, or just goof off on something creative. It’s all entertainment.
Sometimes, my heart aches at the silly YouTube videos people gobble up, or the hours spent managing a fake farm. But then I think about what’s going to come out of all this – how we’re all just goofing off and creating a new and vibrant culture.
Before, TV execs told us what to watch, and when, and we voted with our remotes. Now you and I and all of our friends make all this stuff and tune in to what we want, and vote with our mouse clicks and encouragement. My roommate can star in a video, and I can share an article that I read, and we’re having just as much fun. Plus, we’re using our brains way more.
There was a time when I could hear a song on the radio, pick up my guitar, and strum it out until I got the hang of the song’s chord progression or riff.
In high school, after I picked up my first guitar for $100, I could sit for hours and learn my favorite songs. Over time, I built up a competency for guitar playing. No, I couldn’t hammer out solos like my friends. I didn’t have a knack for songcraft, either. But I had enough skill to play what I wanted to play, and to learn something I heard and liked.
I like to think I still have that skill set. Like riding the proverbial bike, from time to time I pick up my acoustic guitar and everything comes back to me. The time I spent in high school was an investment that pays off every time I play.
My guitar playing came to mind during Merlin Mann’s 37-minute-long video on expertise and fake self-help. Mr. Mann learned that there are several levels of expertise, ranging from novice to expert, and your placement on the gradient is proportional to the time and attention you place on whatever it is you’re studying.
A novice, the thinking goes, starts out knowing nothing, and learns by doing exactly what they’re told. Learn the basics. Simple enough.
My journalism professor, Dr. Dennis Renner, said that “rules are made for smart people to break.” That little maxim always stuck with me because it makes so much sense. Learn the basics before you go sprinting off to change to world. You have to know something before you can’t start messing around. You don’t get smart until you move past the novice level.
So the expert and the master, as Mann labels a sixth level, are free to break the rules because they know the rules inside and out. They know the rules so deeply and personally that the rules fade into habit.
It’s the step above novice, what Dreyfus calls “advanced beginner,” that has me thinking.
For years now, I’ve dabbled in many things and have become an expert of none. It’s the Renaissance Man Syndrome: know a little about a bunch of stuff, enough to talk intelligently during dinner hour conversations, but not enough to go out and change the world. Or get anything practical done. Just knowing is different from actually doing.
Take graphic design. I’ve been doing design work for almost seven years now, from my first design class in college, yet I wouldn’t call myself anything next to an expert. I know enough to get my job done, to dabble in freelance projects, and that’s it. Mostly, I think it’s because I never developed a strong enough foundation. No art training and little design sense handicap me, and prevent me from developing my craft to an expert level.
Writing, however, is something I know deep and well. My whole life, I’ve studied grammar and story telling and expository writing. It made English an obvious bachelor’s degree choice, and helped journalism come naturally to me. Writing isn’t easy. But I know enough to do well, help others, and critique bad writing when I see it. This comes from years of doing writing.
As Merlin says, every writing book on Earth has one shared piece of advice: sit in a chair and write. That’s the only way to get better.
Well, that and pick up a goddamn book now and again.
But besides writing, I don’t have a particular skill I can call my own. Sure, I can fix a computer – but I get the knowledge to do that from online searches and a bit of history. And yeah, I can take a decent photograph – but that comes from seeing how others have done it, not from any particular depth of knowledge.
I respect men and women who can work on cars so much. They have to know a vehicle deep and well or it doesn’t get fixed. It’s a skill I’d love to pick up (and it has me researching some ways to do just that).
Mann argues that so much of our knowledge about a particular subject doesn’t get much deeper than a Wikipedia search and a few how-to articles. We become beginners at something and never really advance beyond that. It’d be like Michaelangelo putting tracing paper over a painting he saw and transferring it the Sistine Chapel. From afar, it might look nice, but up close – well, anyone could do that.
That little bit of knowledge makes us arrogant. We end up thinking we know more than we actually know.
Renaissance Men and Women of old, especially some of our founders like Thomas Jefferson and Ben Franklin, knew a great deal about many things. They were deep and wide. Their lives were dedicated to learning and thinking, and – in all fairness – few of us have time for that today.
Instead, we take up hobbies and learn a lot about one or two subjects. But knowing something deeply doesn’t simply affect what we do in our free time. It also affects our prospects for employment and advancement.
And shucks, it makes us interesting people. Deeply interesting. Like, magazines-or-NPR-will-interview-you-for-your-expertise interesting.
That’s not for everyone. Some people (and you know them well) are comfortable with a mile wide and an inch deep. I respect that, and it’s naive to think that everyone will become an expert in something.
But man, wouldn’t it be great if we had more people who knew what the hell they were talking about when they open their mouth?
Wouldn’t it be cool if more of us moved past the “advanced beginner” stage?
