July 2009: 10 years or 10000 hours

Dear Friends,

Transitions

Life isn’t a matter of milestones but of moments.
– Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy

June is a month for transitions. We move officially from spring to summer and in Maine, perhaps actually. It is the time of year when students of all ages graduate from elementary, middle, high schools and colleges.  In many ways it is the most recognized and formal time of the year for transitions. But not all transitions are noted by formal ceremonies, graduations or promotions. Most are, I think, more gradual and subtle. They creep up on us or we pass through them and then only later do we recognize a specific moment as a major transition point. It may be, as it was for our son, the point in time when he, a high school senior, took on the responsibility to get himself half way around the world for a semester abroad. Leaving his family at the airport gate and accepting the responsibility to make his connections, get where he was supposed to be, and be responsible for embracing his experience and having a wonderful time. Perhaps that was a greater transition than walking across the stage and being handed his diploma.

During a graduation speech this month, I listened as the speaker listed ten important life lessons for the students who were graduating from high school. The one that stood out for me was number seven on his list: “To do anything well takes time, either ten years or 10,000 hours of work and practice.”

As I sat there watching diplomas being handed out I began to think back across my career as a photographer. In my first incarnation I was a newspaper photographer. I worked for a daily newspaper, which printed five days a week in East Tennessee. I wasn’t trained as a journalist but they hired me and taught me what they needed from me as a photographer. They also gave me room to grow and develop as a photographer. It took about 10,000 hours (4 years of working 50 hours a week) to become a fairly good small town newspaper photographer.

The second incarnation for me as a photographer was as a teacher, first at the Maine Photographic Workshops and then at the Waterford School in Sandy Utah. In all I taught for twelve years but it took several years at MPW and a year or so at Waterford for me to become a fairly good teacher in each of those programs. Again, 10,000 hours to learn, practice and grow into my potential.

My third and current incarnation as a photographer is working for myself making the photographs I feel compelled to make, producing books and exhibitions. During each earlier stage of my photographic life I did my “personal” work while working, over and beyond, what I was being paid to do. I made those images for myself. Leaving the security of teaching for a salary at Waterford School allowed me to make my personal work my focus but required me to do it in a different way. I had to become more concerned about how (at what cost) the work was being produced and where it was going (to bring in income). It took several years of working for myself for me to begin to understand the responsibility that was required for me to make honest real work. What I required in order for my work to evolve and grow.I had to put the time in.

In each of these incarnations there was no bell ringing moment of clarity, no graduation where it became clear that I could be trusted with an important assignment or trusted to understand what teaching required beyond simple knowledge of the material, or where I felt comfortable with myself and my work. Yet in each situation there was a point when I looked back and realized that I was a different photographer, teacher or artist. At each stage there was a moment of transition, perhaps lost in the chaos of daily living, but a point at which I understood more deeply what I was trying to do. Today I am simply a different person, a different photographer than I was a ten years ago, or even a year ago. I feel more comfortable in my skin as a photographer. I don’t worry about what others think of my work, but simply own it as mine. It is what I do.

As you continue your work, photographic or otherwise, remember the “ten years or 10,000 hours” rule. Put in your time. Do your work. You may have graduations and formal transitions of one sort or another. If you continue to do your work, being true to what you need to be doing, then one day you will turn around and realize that you have made a huge transition. You may not have noticed the change because you are in the middle of it but to someone watching from a slight distance the change will be noticeable. As I watched Andrew walk from his childhood into his adulthood in the airport in Boston, so others will watch you make the transition from working on becoming a photographer to being a photographer. After this happens you may look back on the past 10,000 hours and see not how long it took, but how quick the time went. So go and practice, do your work.

Until next month,
Tillman