We have a friend who worked as a professional photographer and photojournalist for 30 years. Now that he’s retired, he just carries his camera with him and shoots out of habit. He then makes “Photoshop art” by colorizing, texturizing and filtering photos on his Mac.
When he brings by photos of a recent event, like the 4th of July barbecue, I’m always amazed. The shots are amazing. They move you, and you can taste the hot dogs, smell the summer night, and remember just how that scene in the photo felt.
But there are only three or four photos. Total.
“Where are the rest?” I think. He was snapping shots all night.
Everyone thinks he’s a great photographer. And he is. But he doesn’t show you 95% of his product. Just the best shots.
37signals wrote something interesting on this today that reminded me of our friend.
And today, I saw Michael Curry speak at the Portland Creative Conference, and he said something that caught me: “The most successful artists create FAR more bad work than mediocre ones do.”
My favorite example of this is Prince. He has recorded and released hundreds, if not a thousand, songs in his career. A LOT of them are really inane, repetitive and uninteresting. But there are easily 50 really good ones. And there are probably 20 unbelievable, unforgettable ones. “Little Red Corvette,” “Kiss,” “1999” and the list goes on.
Most of us would kill to write ONE unbelievable song in our lives. He’s got 20. But he had to get out lot of chaff to get those golden kernels.
September 07, 2008, 1:22am Comments
