On Art and Effort
My friend Steve just posted a piece he titled In Praise of Talent, and it was about his experiences and reactions to the arts of writing and photography, particularly as they relate to the journalistic endeavors he has pursued through his life. He expressed annoyance at attribution to the tools of the trade (particularly in photography, since I doubt anyone would ever accuse a writer of having used his pencil, pen, typewriter or word processor to particular advantage). At the same time, he admits that God-given “talent” can sometimes be mistaken for training and practice. I am married to a singer who has sung at Carnegie Hall (a 125-year anniversary celebration of the life of Cole Porter) and am reminded often that when asked how to get to Carnegie Hall, one is obliged to say, “practice, practice, practice”. This has all sparked some thinking on my part on the subject of talent, training and practice, particularly as it relates to writing (since that is my medium of choice), but also in regards to photography.
My exposure (note the obvious pun) to photography began in high school. My good friend Tom was, and remains today, an exceptional photographer. In the late 1960’s photography was still a chemical process as it had not yet broadly digitized. You would use silver halide film that was sensitive to light inside a closed camera chamber (let light in and you exposed and ruined your film). You had a set number of exposures based on the rolling of that film into the camera, though pros like Tom would occasionally take advantage of the added slack on both ends of the roll of film to squeeze in an extra shot or two. Amateurs then would take out the film, being even more cautious about not letting any light get to the film, and drop it off at a processor, who would “fix” the film with a chemical called Hypo (sodium thiosulphate). If you so ordered, they would then transform the film (called a negative) into a photograph by transferring the image onto photographic paper with similar light-sensitive emulsions or chemicals on their surface. If my friends Tom and Steve read this simplistic truncated version of the photographic development process they would cringe. As pros in this arena, they would do their own film developing and printing in their dark rooms and know exactly the steps and the best chemicals to use to both create the best results on the negatives and the best results on the many ways they could print those images for maximum clarity or maximum artistic value. What little I know about this all was a result of Tom trying to teach me about it in his dark room in Rome on several occasions. I should also note that we worked almost exclusively in black and white since color was introduced with a large quantum of added knowledge, skill, equipment and effort.
My point about this is that my impression was that doing photography as recently as fifty years ago was both an art and a science and required a great deal of knowledge and skill to accomplish quite apart from the content value of the images captured or the images reproduced. It was truly a blend of a great deal of art and effort, but even more, it was a matter of passion because there was a great deal involved that one needed in both knowledge, equipment and willingness to dedicate time. Tom loved it and it became a passion that he turned into a career that transcended black and white photography done in a dark room to digital video work. I think it is fair to say that most of the knowledge and skill acquired and refined in the chemical processing was abandoned in favor of the new digital technology that encompassed not only color, but also video over still photography. While I’m sure everyone would argue that some of the basics learned and abandoned are imbedded in the current “talent” or skill that Tom uses to produce his current video projects. I feel it might be likened to the learning of Latin to enhance a writer’s current skills. It’s hard to see how conjugating Latin verbs for four years adds to my ability to write this story, but I just know it does. Maybe I just want to insist that it does so I don’t feel that I wasted those four years, but maybe it is another case where the learning process involves many different building blocks, yadda-yadda-yadda.
I don’t know whether you just noticed that I very neatly transitioned this piece from a discussion of photography to writing, but us writers have learned over the years to do such things in a barely noticeable way to move the narrative arc of our stories along and drag the reader with us. I learned this mostly from my studies of Caesar’s Gallic Wars…just kidding. One last note I want to make about photography is that today’s move to digital has placed photographic capability in the hands of almost every person on the face of the earth as penetration of smartphones has grown to its ubiquitous state. When I am asked to select a new phone by my friends at Apple (the largest company on Earth, by the way), I have to choose either the one with extra added photographic capabilities and quality or other features like extended battery. I always choose the latter because I feel that the current camera capabilities are so much better than anything I need or desire that I might as well opt for the seemingly more practical battery life. I’ll bet Tom and Steve are cringing again.
Fast forward from high school to the mid-1990’s. For some reason, before the disappearance of old time photography, I bought a Nikon camera and ten rolls of 400 ASA black and white film. I had the urge to go out and about in NYC in the early morning and photographic that magnificent and interesting city in a study of black and white. I recorded about fifty great photos and had a local lab develop the film and print 8×10 prints on nice glossy stock. I put that Nikon down and never bought another roll of film, but I feel like I recorded my full limit of photographic “talent” on those ten rolls. I have framed those photographs and used them on the walls of several homes I have had in the past twenty-five years. People ask me about them occasionally and I offhandedly say I was in a brief spasm of photographic interest. I would never pretend that I have the photographic talent of Tom, Steve or my more recent friend, David, whose beautiful photos (called The Eye of Taggart series) adorn our walls today.
What I do is write. And I have been writing this blog for twenty months now with over 700 stories. Those daily 1,300-word stories are the wood that I chop to hone my skills while Tom, Steve and David sharpen their focus in their photographic arts. As for the topic of talent, I am inclined to say that talent is mostly a matter of propensity. I can and have taken good photographs with artistic elements, but I have little propensity in that direction. On the other hand, based on my prolific writing volume (10 books worth in the last 20 months), I must be prone to writing. I think I have some talent in that arena, but mostly I have the propensity to apply the art and the effort that I have to give into this medium.