Be A (Re)Visitor An Article by Rob Walker robwalker.substack.com I was thinking about this not long ago while reading in Petapixel an essay by a photographer named Scott Reither, “Long Form Study: Why Photographers Should Repeatedly Revisit A Scene.” In it, he described photographing one particular stretch of beach, over and over, throughout his career. Of course that landscape has changed over time, and of course he’s had moments when he felt he’d captured the same territory so many times there was nothing left to see. But there was always something more to see — maybe because of a change in Reither’s life, rather than in the physical environment. seeingchangephotography
The superficial aspects of what someone else is doing What keeps me busy in my classes is trying to help my students learn how to think. They say, "Rob holds his hands like this...," and they don't know that the reason I hold my hands like this is not to make myself look that way. The end result is not to hold the gun that way; holding the gun that way is the end result of doing something else. …The more general issue is that a person who doesn't understand the thing they're trying to copy will end up copying unimportant superficial aspects of what somebody else is doing and miss the fundamentals that drive the superficial aspects. This even happens when there are very detailed instructions. Although watching what other people do can accelerate learning, especially for beginners who have no idea what to do, there isn't a shortcut to understanding something deeply enough to facilitate doing it well that can be summed up in simple rules, like "omit needless words". Dan Luu, Some thoughts on writing The Elements of Style style