Hi Rob
I couldn't disagree more with the above statement. It is undoubtedly true that innate visual awareness differs amongst people (bell curve, I guess) but the idea that any trait is immutable is silly. "Seeing" is a skill that responds to practise, practise, practise like any other. The main problem (IMO) that holds people back, especially if they work alone, is figuring out what to practise. That's where education and articles like Michael's help.
For me personally, the journey from helplessness to taking at least some control over my own visual development started when i finally figured out the sort of photographs I really liked and what I liked about them. You can absorb a general sense of an aesthetic by finding exemplars of the kind of shots you want to make and comparing your own efforts to those. Not slavishly mimicing of course but getting a grasp of the common features. After a while and after a lot of practise I find my ability to recognise possibilities has sharpened. I know this for sure because when I am out in the field surrounded by things which don't fit the framework, I am generally clueless what to shoot and then suddenly when the right cirumstances occur the potential for shots is instantly obvious. Indeed, so much so that there sometimes when things fortuitously conspire, there seem an endless stream of possibilities.
I'd be interested to know how many others agree with Rob and think you have to be "gifted"...
I could not agree more with your post.
About what Rob said, "beeing gifted", I disagree completly but it is a concept very anchored and most of the time accepted so.
In my experience, this is absolutely not the case, and thank god it is like that.
Because we would have a fistful of elected people while there would be no chance for the average to reach this promised land...
May I tell you a short story from ny Fine Arts student.
When I enter the school in first year, there was clearly two kind of students.
1) the ones who have always painted and drawing since baby, who had natural gift, and who had already experienced some incomes and had already big amount of works.
I was in that section.
2) the ones who did not had already experience and just basics skills. These were obviously not gifted and had very few work done.
Very fast, these two sections divided themselves into the "goods" and the "bads", the gifted and the clumsy group.
In the gifted group, we were very pretentious and most of us decided that we did not have to work so much because we were already good.
In the bad group, there were working like ants.
In a couple of months, the non-gifted started to show impressive improvements, both in skills and vision, while the gifted group was stagnating. 6 months later, it was clear that the non-gifted overtook us. We were arrogants, we beleived that a minimum work was necessary because we were blessed by the god of arts...but our arrogance did not last very long.
Those who came with the intention of learning and put a lot of efforts in prtactise, reached superior vision and technique.
I can tell you that in practise, very few of the gifted managed to succed in art, while more of the non-gifted reached a career and respect in their art.
This concept of gifted is a romantic concept. The reality is working again and again, then raise the talent. And each individual with no expection can become a master in art, if he just work for it.
Fred.
