zlacker

Reminds me of this:

"""On 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 classroom, he explained, would be in the “quantity” group. They would be graded solely 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 in 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 nearly perfect image.

At the end of the term, he was surprised to find that all the best photos were produced by the quantity group. During the semester, 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 quality group sat around speculating about perfection. In the end, they had little to show for their efforts other than unverified theories and one mediocre photo."""

from https://www.thehuntingphotographer.com/blog/qualityvsquantit...

>>vansch+(OP)
I remember the same anecdote, but about pottery https://austinkleon.com/2020/12/10/quantity-leads-to-quality... >>12653203 https://blog.codinghorror.com/quantity-always-trumps-quality...

>>vansch+(OP)
Oh there you go, that's what I was talking about >>46174424

>>gus_ma+U9
Yeah I’m pretty sure this was about pottery.

If you make the same pot 100 times that 100th pot is your best one.

>>kimos+nh
I found the name of that photographer (RIP), who lives in Florida and who taught. Also has a thing about quantity over quality. But his own site didn't specifically mention this anecdote. I've also read the pottery one.

I'd love to know if either are real and verifiable.

The lesson is most likely real and applicable either way.

>>neogod+ij
My experience with writing, music, and photography is that I get better results trying a bunch of different things rather than focusing on one or a few. The quality is still variable, but the hit rate is much higher. I can then switch to polishing a batch of hits rather than trying to turn a single idea into a hit.

>>kimos+nh
The story about the photography students was conveyed almost verbatim in the book Atomic Habits fwiw.

But I think this type of principle has been relayed through many forms. Even Bruce Lee has the famous quote “I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once, but I fear the man who has practiced one kick 10,000 times.”

>>vansch+(OP)
Even in film photography it can be cheap to create alternatives and choose between them. Other things aren't like that.

Does the blogger mean something different than "Plan to throw one away - you will anyway. "

>>vansch+(OP)
> … these students were busy taking photos, experimenting with composition and lighting, testing out various methods in the darkroom, and learning from their mistakes.

Why?

Supposedly they would be graded A for exposing 100 frames of the lens-cap.

Presumably the "quantity" group were highly self-motivated individuals invested in developing their skills.

Presumably the "quality" group were also highly self-motivated individuals invested in developing their skills.

    ~

Presumably the "quality" group were free to produce as many photos as they wished.

The difference is that the "quality" group only had once chance to impress the professor.

In contrast, the "quantity" group had at-least 100 chances to impress the professor.

Sampling bias.

>>vansch+(OP)
@thehuntingphotographer > "… I’ll often shoot 1,000+ shots a day. Of course only a fraction of those shots are good but the act of repetition leads to perfection."

Where's the evidence of improvement?

Maybe it's just a bigger sample, so more chance that some will be good shots?