Crown

Roof detail, Commonwealth Market, Singapore.

There's an interesting story in the book Art & Fear about a pottery class. The teacher divided the students into two groups, and told the first group that at they end of the term, they would be graded only on the quality of their work. They only needed to produce their one best piece of pottery to be graded. The second group of students were told that they would be graded solely on the quantity of their work. The student with the most pieces at the end of the term would get the best grade.

Now here's the thing, at the end of the term, the best pieces of pottery came from the students in the second group, the group that was only concerned about number of pieces they could produce. Why do you think that happened?

The guys who wrote Art & Fear, say that it's because the ones who were doing more work got to practice their craft, learn from their mistakes and make better art. The ones who were focused on the one perfect piece never got enough practice to improve their craft. In this case, the perfect was the enemy of the good enough.

This story sort of makes me feel better about what I post here. LC sometimes tells me the pic I'm working on isn't very good. I tell her, "it's ok dear, I am working on quantity not quality" :-)

Elsewhere:

Tan Lip Seng is a Singaporean photographer who shoots marvellous pictures on colour slide film. To my eye there is a different look to these photos compared to a picture shot on a digital camera. Check it out yourself.