Expert

Last fall I was prepping files for a new promo card and noticed a couple of new FAQ links my printer had posted on tips for image quality. While waiting for everything to upload to their servers I clicked on a tutorial on sharpening best practices in Photoshop and was stunned that I didn't already know the information. I actually grinned at my realization that even though I have used Photoshop daily for 15+ years I really don't have a fucking clue about 97% of the features, especially in their evolution since PS 3.0 back when I was in high school.

In the spirit of this little lesson that I decided to begin the new year with a sort of mandate to better immerse myself in the applications and techniques of the ever-changing photography universe. The idea was to simply become a more knowledgeable user of programs that I use every day (Photoshop, Lightroom, Dreamweaver, Expression Media, InDesign, Excel) and also begin building a foundation for newer applications that I want to embrace (Flash, Final Cut, Garage Band/Pro Tools). I would try to learn more about the tools I use through research on new camera and lighting techniques, and hopefully also get my newly acquired Super Speed Graphic 4x5 up and running and on assignment for a client.

In short I wanted to move closer to becoming an expert in various parts of my working life.

Thus far, about 200 hours of tutorials (mostly lynda.com) and exercises later, jammed into a very busy opening 8 weeks of the year, I'm experiencing way more mental strain than joy, even though I have learned a few things. I wasn't expecting anything to happen overnight, but the process had led to some interesting internal debates about the cost of expertise.

A case in point is my education towards learning CSS (cascading style sheets), which are used to separate the style and content of a web site. I've always designed my own sites and over the last couple of years it has become very obvious that I'm behind web standards which have deeply embraced CSS. And so I set about to learn more about CSS design with the goal of revamping the internal structure of johnloomis.com and implementing a modest new feature. After 50 hours of learning and tinkering I was really not much further along than before except for a broader understanding of the theory. But what is worse is that I can easily see that 50 more hours will not get me there either, and that 100 hours together is probably not worth my time.

The effort to learn CSS has brought up the larger question of what is it that I want to spend my time learning and doing. Is it web site design? No, it's not. I love design but I don't want it to interfere and confuse my photography goals, because ultimately my interest in design is really only to better present my love of photography. If it was a matter of 100 hours then maybe it would be worth it to become an CSS design expert. But it's probably closer to 1000, or even 5000 hours.

Since having these realizations and debates I've been able to see more clearly the many ways in which I scatter my mental attention and efforts to things which are outside of my core passion. Partly its a way to distract attention from the parts of photography which really aren't that much fun, and partly its the way that we live and work these days... constantly trying to become an expert in everything in order to get the most of it it. I'd like to know more than 3% of Photoshop, but I certainly don't need to know 100% of it because its not really applicable to my work.

I'm not giving up on my experiment but I have refocused it on the applications and techniques that can improve my photography instead of distract it. As for the web site I've decided that I'm better off hiring a professional designer to work on it with me, just like I already have in years past with taxes. Those decisions can be expensive ones but its worth it to keep our eyes on the larger goal.

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Comments (3)

John - I enjoyed this post and recently reached a similar conclusion. I came into photography from a computer science background and spent many years designing my own web sites (pre-CSS), convinced there was nothing I couldn't do myself.

A few months ago, as I began to figure out the layout for my new site and realized that I wanted it W3C-compliant and all in CSS (no tables), I quickly saw that I was in over my head. Rather than spending all those extra hours trying to understand the intricacies of the code, I paid an expert to do it and used that time for other, better things, like developing my 08 marketing plan. It's part of a larger lesson I've slowly been learning about honing in on the things I do best (photography) and handed off everything else (design, accounting, etc.) to qualified professionals.

John

I absolutely agree. With photoshop I have been learning things as I need them. So my knowledge in photoshop is largely driven by what I want to achieve with a photograph. This is the inverse of learning things in photoshop and then figuring out how to best apply that knowledge. Not sure which one is better but the former is easier, less time consuming and more intuitive.

Pretty soon when you start getting those big advertising gigs with 20 layers of composites, and perfect this and perfect that ..you can just hire some retoucher to do it all for you.

By the way I'm looking forward to your assignment images from Costa Rica.

-Sherman

I'm sorry I found your website. It's too well written, too nicely designed, too packed with literate and trenchant observations.

How can you be so selfish as to presume we all have enough time to read yet another great blog?

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