Over the last two days, I’ve watched two lectures from a guy named Randy Pausch on YouTube.  He is a professor at Carnegie Mellon who is dying of cancer.  The first one I watched was his "Last Lecture" where he talked about childhood dreams, following your dreams and enabling others to follow their dreams.  The second one I watched was about time management.

Here are the links if you’d like to watch them yourself.

Randy Pausch’s Time Management lecture

Randy Pausch’s Last Lecture

The Last Lecture didn’t speak to me as much as I expected it would but here is the quote I will take away from it.

Remember, brick walls let us show our dedication.  They are there to separate us from those people who don’t really want to achieve their … dreams.

This is the lecture I watched yesterday and I’ve thought about this point he made several times in the last 24 hours.  As I think back over the years about how I’ve always loved photography, the things that stopped me prior to now are so insignificant that I find them embarrassing.  The next time you encounter a road block on your way to making your dreams happen, think to yourself that it’s there to separate the wheat from the chafe – to identify the real achiever from the wanna-be.  One more lesson from this lecture I thought was pertinent on this journey of mine -

Experience comes with time and it’s really, really valuable and there is no short cuts to getting it.  Good judgment comes from experience.  Experience comes from bad judgment.  So if things aren’t going well, that probably means you’re learning a lot and it will go better later.

Today I watched his lecture on Time Management.  I think the time I spent watching this lecture was well worth it.  But then again, I’ve always loved this sort of thing.  Stephen Covey is a rock star to me.  Anyway, here are a few things I learned from Randy today.  He talked about opportunity costs in his lecture.  About the fact that some of the poor choices we make in how we spend our time come at a cost because we can never get that time back.  For example – one of my new year’s resolutions was to spend less time playing webkinz.  Webkinz is not a bad thing but it is not time well spent in my desire to become a successful photographer running my own business.  The time I spent playing that game is time I can never get back.  Wikipedia defines Opportunity Cost as

the loss of potential gain from the best alternative to any choice. Thus, opportunity cost is the cost of pursuing one choice instead of another. Every action has an opportunity cost. For example, someone who invests $10,000 in a stock denies oneself the interest that one can easily earn by leaving the $10,000 dollars in a bank account instead. Opportunity cost is not restricted to monetary or financial costs: lost time, pleasure or any other benefit that provides utility should also be considered.

Opportunity cost is a key concept in economics because it implies the choice between desirable, yet mutually-exclusive results.

Webkinz isn’t bad.  I play games with my children, I’m a part of their world and I send them virtual gifts while I’m entertained for a time.  Yet at the end of a year, I would have accumulated a lot of virtual items in my webkinz world but no experience for my real world business.  I’m sure this is a concept that will impact my free time decisions over the coming weeks.

Randy also quoted Walt Disney who said

If you can dream it, you can do it.

Randy went on to say

If you refuse to allow yourself to dream it, I know you won’t do it.  The power of dreams is that they give us the power to take the first step toward an accomplishment.

Then Randy talked about how the original Disneyland park was built in 366 days.  From the first shovel full of dirt being moved until the first paying ticket holder entered the park – 366 days.  If Disneyland can go from a plan to reality in one year, why can’t I go from an enthusiastic amateur photographer to a capable photographer beginning her business in a year?  No reason at all.  I can.  According to Randy when someone asked Walt how he did it in 366 days he responded, "We used every one of them."

Another thing he covered actually came from Stephen Covey.  Being a Covey fan, I’m surprised I’d forgotten this.  Perhaps it was just hearing it from a new source that struck me today but Randy covered Covey’s four quadrant to do list.  He talked about how much time we spend in quadrant 3 and 4 that is really a waste of time.  Don’t know why, but today a light bulb went off over my head while he was talking. 

One final lesson I got from the time management lecture was this.  He said to find your creative time and defend it ruthlessly.  As aspiring photographers, we all need creative time.  I know for myself, I frequently find myself thinking I’ll do/learn/watch/read after my children are put in bed.  Then once that finally happens I find myself worn out and too far removed from any creative spirit I might have had earlier in the day.  Even if I only set aside creative time once a week, I’m sure I would benefit from it.

Well, that’s all I have to share today.  Maybe we could each throw up a prayer for a man named Randy who is dying of cancer who made the world a little bit better of a place.

Stay focused!

-A

A truly great photograph is a combination of skill, vision, and intention. Sometimes it even involves a little bit of luck. But if you have to rely on luck to get great photographs, you’ve yet to master the craft.

-Wendy Schulz

So, I was playing around on Stumble today and an article called Thinking like a Genius came up.  It turns out, I’m a genius!  Strategy number three of thinking like a genius says

Produce! A distinguishing characteristic of genius is productivity.  Thomas Edison held 1,093 patents.  He guaranteed productivity by giving himself and his assistants idea quotas.  In a study of 2,036 scientists throughout history, Dean Keith Simonton of the University of California at Davis found that the most respected scientists produced not only great works, but also many "bad" ones.  They weren’t afraid to fail, or to produce mediocre in order to arrive at excellence.

Well, that strategy has been working well for me.  I’ve been practicing and occasionally getting something good.  I have a whole lot of mediocre pictures and some bad ones that I can just delete.  Maybe I shouldn’t be so hard on myself for not getting more great shots?  Is this a well kept secret that many successful professional photographers have?  Take a bunch and you’ll get a few? 

I think I’ll continue learning to take a technically good photograph, thereby lowering my number of mediocre shots and minimizing my bad ones.  Today I took 180 shots.  Upon reviewing them, I immediately eliminated about 40 of them.  About 40 more will be eliminated upon closer inspection.  Some of them were taken purely to capture the moment as a snapshot of my children in the moment – so those are okay.  I’ll keep them for what they are.  About 15 shots were made on a contrived practice set.  I spied a spider web outside my back door and I misted it with water attempting to capture a water-glistening-in-the-sun-on-a-spiderweb photo.  Didn’t turn out at all like what I was going for, but I’ll at least study them before I delete them.  About 50 more frames were shot trying to capture "snow" as my children call it… little bud leaves being blown down to earth from the huge trees above in our yard.  I don’t think you can see the "snow" in any of them. 

Will any of what remains turn out to be art?  Perhaps one or two.  But the genius in me says it’s okay if none do.  Tomorrow is another day to achieve excellence!  Just pick up the camera.

So there is a cropped portion of one of my spiderweb photos converted to black and white.  Does it speak to you?  Yeah…  me neither.