I read the 10,000-hour study, and I tend to agree with it, although perhaps not always with so specific a number. Before reading the 10,000-hour study, I'd observed on my own that in a number of fields -- medicine, law, journalism, law enforcement -- it takes roughly five years of steady work before you can really be called "excellent" (as opposed to "having great potential, etc.) That, as it happens, is about 10,000 hours after graduation from a professional school. I would not be at all surprised to find that the same is true for art forms that have clearly defined standards of excellence, which would not include photography, painting, sculpture, etc. But a horn player, for example, cannot hide a lack of ability beneath a layer of bullshit or personality. It's clear to any experienced musician who listens to him/her whether or not he has the chops. In fact, in some auditions for orchestral positions, the auditions are done blind, with the musician sitting behind a curtain while the judges sit outside, listening only to the music.
I also think that the word "talent" is widely misused. I distinguish several different but related concepts. There is, for example, "facility," which in photography would mean a possibly innate ability to make photographs that are at least superficially interesting. You see it quite often in beginning photojournalism classes, where some people struggle, and others do well from the beginning -- and yet, you really can't predict from the possession of facility who will turn out to be a excellent photographer. To use an example from painting, Cezanne was never a facile artist, either in painting or drawing. Many of his early drawings are painfully crude. He had to struggle constantly to get where he was going, but he got there, and is recognized as a master. Van Gogh, on the other hand, showed great facility almost from his earliest drawings. He, too, eventually got where he wanted to go. Whether or not his innate facility helped with that is an interesting question. In additional to "facility," there is "skill." To become skilled, you don't necessarily need facility -- almost anyone can learn to become an exceptionally skilled photographer (or draftsman), in the sense of making photographs or drawings that are technically excellent. In painting, you often see it with the so-called plein-aire painters, who can do nice, charming paintings that don't really excite the interest (they are akin to wallpaper.) They are, in fact, the expert application of a technique to a scene, without much thought involved.
I reserve the use of "talent" or "talented" to people who bring something new or extraordinary to their art form. They combine skill with thoughtful consideration, and perhaps even a philosophical position. Genuinely talented people are quite rare, and often (in my experience) somewhat unbalanced when it comes to their art form. They are going to do what they are going to do, and nobody will turn them aside.
Alain's problem with finding few really good photographs after six months of hard work strikes me as amusing, something that would happen to a young, inexperienced person. If you grant that Ansel Adams was a talented photographer, how many really exceptional photographs did he take in the space of his long career? Two or three dozen, at the most? Say, one per year? At that rate, Alain should have expected what, 1/2 a good photograph?
JC
