At What Cost?

At what cost does it take to be the best you can be at something? No matter what it is, there’s always a high cost, either emotionally, financially, or in time spent. Often the cost is all three.

Take someone who wants to train for a marathon and be the fastest, most efficient runner possible. Of course, the serious person is either going to hire trainer or do all the reading he or she can about how to train safely, how to build up to longer runs, how to eat, what shoes to buy, where to run when there’s snow and ice outside, when to suspect actual injury over normal soreness, etc.

The person who wants to be a concert pianist practices hours a day and studies under a qualified instructor. The guy who want to get to the master level at chess will study game after game - openings, mid-games and end games and will continually play someone with a higher ranking in order to improve their skills.

I fail to see, then, given this common sense approach to anything, why someone thinks they can become a brilliant artist over night, whatever the discipline. Oh, there is certainly instinctive talent in any discipline - the kid who remembers legal chess moves without any formal instruction after watching several games. The swimmer with the perfect body type - broad shoulders and narrow lower body. The outsider artist who eccentrically decorates his walls with thousands of different-colored bottle caps in an interesting, and instinctively well-composed pattern.

But these people are exceptions. They are few and far between. I see over and over again works of photographers that don’t even come close to following any established rules, who are blind to flaws which are obvious to anyone who studies their work. For example, a sharp photo of the lilies in their garden, with the dirt clumps far below the lilies in equally sharp focus which in effect ruins the shot. Or the guy that doesn’t see the fence post in the background growing out of someone’s head in the foreground. Yet when they ask for a critique of their work, they retreat and sulk in a corner when the obvious flaws are pointed out to them.

Being in love with a work you created because of the colors contained therein, but being blind to the blotch that was on your lens or the entire bright, blown-out section of the image (which can work in some shots) is like being in love with someone because you remember a time when he didn’t beat you daily. It’s a state of denial. In order to improve, you truly have to look at your “children” objectively.

I have a few ugly offspring still in my gallery that I have not deleted because they were some of my first born - but the ones that were embarrassingly poorly composed or were technically horrible are gone, with the exception of one or two that still get a lot of views. I know I should put them out of their misery - but I can’t quite kill them off yet.

At any rate, back to the original question, I think the cost of making good art is time, a good deal of study, a grasp of basic artistic rules and principals and knowing when it’s ok to break those rules, and one of the most important costs, you have to sacrifice your ego. That doesn’t mean you accept a critique from someone if their critique is based solely on personal preference, or taste in art, but if someone points out the big, ugly, glaring pimple in your image, shove your ego down where it belongs and pay attention to the criticism. Most importantly, study what you did wrong and don’t repeat it. Keep learning.