Minutes of a Monday #40

#minutesofamonday

Brain Food > Perfection is the enemy

“In the first day of class, Jerry Uelsmann, a professor at the University of Florida, divided his film photography students into two groups.

Everyone on the left side of the class would be in the ‘quantity’ group. They would solely be graded on the amount of work they produced. On the final day of class, he would tally the number of photos submitted by each student. One hundred photos would rate an A, ninety photos a B, eighty photos a C, and so on.

Meanwhile, everyone on the right side of the room would be the ‘quality’ group. They would be graded only on the excellence of their work. They would only need to produce one photo during the semester, but to get an A, it had to be a perfect image.

At the end of term, he was surprised to find that all the best photos were produced by the ‘quantity’ group. These students were busy taking photos, experimenting with composition and lighting, testing out various methods in the darkroom and learning from their mistakes. In the process of creating hundreds of photos, they honed their skills. Meanwhile, the ‘quantity’ group sat around speculating about perfection.

In the end, they had little to share for their efforts other than unverified theories and one mediocre photo.”

Jerry Uelsmann’s oft quoted experiment on quantity over quality.

Soul Food

“The greatest discovery of my generation is the fact that human beings can alter their lives by altering their attitudes of mind.”

William James

LOL

Noel Thomas David Gallagher on Mavericks and Harry Styles:

Appendix

“At last I have what I wanted. Am I happy? Not really. But what’s missing? My soul no longer has that piquant activity conferred by desire…Oh, we shouldn’t delude ourselves - pleasure isn’t in the fulfilment, but in the pursuit.”

Pierre-Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais

AOB

I made my Irish prime time TV drama debut in Clean Sweep recently - you can check it out on the RTE Player (VPN might be handy). It goes out in the U.S. on Sundance Now later this year.

Have a great week - Niall