Action Bias or "Do Something"

Back in the day, famed Broadway director Gower Champion was directing a musical. With time pressure mounting, he entered the theatre during a rehearsal and was alarmed to see the cast just standing around on stage. The choreographer was just sitting there, in the second row of the audience, his head in his hands.

The director asked, “What’s going on?”

“I just don’t know what to do next,” the choreographer lamented.

The director blinked. “Well, do something, so we can change it!”

I enjoyed this story from Do Something, So We Can Change It!, Allen Pike’s post about tackling ‘two-way’ decisions proactively. If a decision is reversible, it’s better to make your choice quickly, and refine from there. You can undo a mistake if needed, and if you are quicker to take action, you’ll receive feedback faster. Then you can tweak your approach based on how it performs in the real world, rather than ruminating about various options and their ever-branching outcomes.

As someone who is prone to analysis paralysis, I’m working to cultivate a bias to action. I‘ve chosen better defaults to help make simple decisions quicker, and I’m prioritising starting over theorising, shipping over finessing.

“One of the few things I know about writing is this: spend it all, shoot it, play it, lose it, all, right away, every time. Do not hoard what seems good for a later place in the book, or for another book; give it, give it all, give it now. The impulse to save something good for a better place later is the signal to spend it now. Something more will arise for later, something better. These things fill from behind, from beneath, like well water.”

—Annie Dillard from The Writing Life

via Austin Kleon

They work as if this were the natural thing to do; they create as if this were the natural thing to do; they give birth to beauty as if this were the natural thing to do. They have entered the way of salvation through unconscious faith. It is a path open to all. And once they have entered this path, the creation of plain, natural beauty becomes a thing of ease, a matter of course. This natural, unforced beauty is the result of a kind of unconscious grace. This grace is a special privilege of craftsmen and leads them to a realm of blessed unawareness. Without consciously thinking whether something is good or bad, creating as if it were the most natural thing in the world to do, making things that are plain and simple but marvellous, this is the state of mind in which artisans do their finest work.

—from The Beauty of Everyday Things by Soetsu Yanagi (emphasis mine)

The Peace of Wild Things

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

by Wendell Berry

…in design (of websites, or home decor, or clothing) having the most sophisticated of everything usually leads to poor results. Elegance is frigid.

Good taste in these involves the right measure of unsophistication. Less exactitude is more joyous, less neurotic, but still refined.

— Simon Sarris

This neatly sums up my feelings about the work of my favourite artists, writers, musicians and photographers.

Enough order to arrest the eye or ear. Enough chaos to feed the heart and mind.

A Fresh Coat of Moss

You should embrace the visceral quality in reading. Read mostly fiction. Read slowly. There is a kind of marinating that happens with very good works, they are always more than their story. The goal is not to digest information, but to layer over your reality with a fresh coat of moss. Your own world becomes colored by these stories, so it is worthwhile to spend time seeking the excellent works from across cultures and history.

You should have a goal, in some sense, to be influenced by the works that you read. All stories influence you, regardless of how they get to you. A person who reads no great stories will be influenced by the few stories he does come across in life, for better or worse — and I think mostly worse.

—Simon Sarris, from Reading Well

When [a man] puts a thing on a pedestal and calls it beautiful, he demands the same delight from others. He judges not merely for himself, but for all men, and then speaks of beauty as if it were a property of things. Thus he says that the thing is beautiful; and it is not as if he counts on others agreeing with him in his judgment of liking owing to his having found them in such agreement on a number of occasions, but he demands this agreement of them. He blames them if they judge differently, and denies them taste, which he still requires of them as something they ought to have; and to this extent it is not open to men to say: Every one has his own taste. —Immanuel Kant, Critique of Judgment, 1790

via the excellent Futility Closet blog by Greg Ross

Complicated vs Complex

Recently, I heard Arthur C Brooks discuss the difference between complicated and complex problems on an episode of the Tim Ferriss Show and it made me think about how that distinction applies to art.

Complicated problems seem difficult when first encountered, but are easy enough to crunch with enough compute. It might take a while, but if you work through the process from beginning to end, you’ll get the answer.

Complex problems often start with simple questions — who will win this football match and how? — but the correct answer, if it even exists, is unknowable. Too many moving parts. Too many unknowns. Too much randomness.

Of course, complex problems are more interesting and important to contemplate:

• why are we here?
• how can I live a good life?
• who do I want to spend it with?

I think this applies to art too. Art that asks more questions than it answers endures, both in the mind and in the canon.

The complexity inherent in good art shouldn’t be confused for complication. The key is work that is dense with meaning and mystery; not necessarily dense pictorially, musically and linguistically. It can be simple, but not shallow. I’m thinking of artists like Agnes Martin, Hiroshi Sugimoto, and Basho who draw power from a minimal approach.

I want to make photographs which share the qualities of the work I admire: pictures that get better over time, that contain details missed on first glance, that leave you with a feeling that you can’t shake. I’m seeking complexity.

Democratically elected governments can to some degree adapt to spatially extended responsibility, because our communications technologies link people who cannot meet face-to-face. But the chasm of time is far more difficult to overcome, and indeed our governments (democratic or otherwise) are all structured in such a way that the whole of their attention goes to the demands of the present, with scarcely a thought to be spared for the future. For [Hans] Jonas, one of the questions we must face is this:

“What force shall represent the future in the present?”

from Tending the Digital Commons by Alan Jacobs

Loved this from James Hill, via Alan Jacobs:

Eve Arnold, the wonderful Magnum photographer, used to recount a story about walking with Henri Cartier-Bresson from the Magnum office in Paris to have lunch at his apartment on the Rue de Rivoli. During the 15-minute stroll home, as he kept telling her that he was no longer interested in photography, only drawing, he took three rolls of film on his Leica.”

“I was not suited for this world, but I am suited for the world I have created” —La Monte Young

From the first part of Tones Drones and Arpeggios: The Magic of Minimalism Part 1. I discovered this excellent old BBC doc the same way I find lots of gems: daring to go below the fold and reading YouTube comments.

Walking with a Butterfly Net

I love this quote I read in a recent Austin Kleon post — Lewis Hyde explaining why he still takes his butterfly net on walks:

I carry it in part to catch and release the few things I can’t identify on the wing but mostly because of the way it changes the way I walk. I don’t know if the same is true for birders with their binoculars or deer hunters with their rifles, but for me, walking with the butterfly net alters my perceptions. It produces a state of mind, a kind of undifferentiated awareness otherwise difficult to attain. It is a puzzle to me why this is the case, why, that is, I can’t simply learn from walking with the net and then put it away and transfer what I know to walking without it.

Perhaps it has to do with the way the net declares my intention, which is to apprehend what is in front of me. Walking with the net is like reading with a pencil in hand. The pencil means you want to catch the sense of what you are reading. You intend to underline, put check marks and exclamation points in the margin and make the book your own….

As with the pencil, so with the net: Both declare the possibility of action, and that possibility changes the person holding the tool.

Carrying a camera provokes the same feeling in me. Even if I don’t intend to take pictures, my eye is a little sharper and I look closer at the people and places that I pass. Instead of passively absorbing the visual world as an undifferentiated flow, I start to slice it into potential photographs. The readier the camera is to shoot, the more powerful the effect. If it’s in my bag my attention is duller than if I have the camera in hand, exposure set.

The effect is refined further depending on what camera I am carrying. For walkaround purposes I favour cameras with fixed prime lenses. The focal length of the camera I carry narrows the range of possible pictures I can make, so my attention becomes more attuned to certain subjects and working distances.

Likewise, and as Lewis and Austin mention, reading with a pencil in hand has the same effect for me. I’m reading to identify the information I want, rather than blindly ploughing through. I experience a milder version of this effect when reading digitally with the intention to highlight key passages, but it pales in comparison.

Week Notes 018 — W/E 6 August 2023

• A mostly deskbound week with a few pleasant exceptions.
• I’d left my VAT to the last minute, but turned it around within a day and a half. Having to sort my tax stuff four times a year is a revelation. I used to go through a year’s worth of paper receipts and bank statements in January. The ensuing Hell Week would destroy any new year enthusiasm that I’d been nuturing. Now, almost everything is digital, all business expenses go through one of two cards, and I’ve only got three months of transactions to deal with so it’s a fraction of the hassle.
• A couple of days of post work on two separate projects. Some last minute high res to grade and retouching on a handful of pictures. This year I started to use frequency separation, rather than working on normal layers when retouching, and it’s hugely improved the quality and subtlety of my results. It feels a little clunky at first, but it’s well worth learning if you’re unhappy with your skin work.
• I shot a studio visit with Alice Irwin at the end of the week. Alice works in multiple mediums: from large scale sculptures, to prints and drawings. I photographed her a few years ago as part of a series documenting artists at work. She’s since moved spaces (within the same studio complex) and is now working with screen printing, rather than etching. She wanted some new pictures to show her current space and process, so we spent an afternoon printmaking, shooting, and catching up.
  • We probably spent too much time chatting — a lot of the pictures weren’t usable because Alice is mid word… This is something to watch out for, especially when photographing interesting people. You’re having a great time chatting and snapping, but you need to pause and make sure that you get the pictures that you came for. That said, there’s still a reason to work this way: while you get fewer keepers, the successful pictures have a feeling of relaxed intimacy that I really like. When people aren’t used to being photographed, the experience of being ‘examined’ can make them feel uncomfortable, especially if you aren’t talking or taking pictures. I prefer to shoot and talk liberally, so that the subject gets used to the sound and presence of the camera and it begins to disappear. You get a lot of crap pictures in the process, but you create a relaxed mood that’s hard to find if you’re precious about every frame.
• I revisited Matt Black’s American Geography this week. Recently, I’d thought about selling it, as it didn’t grab me initially, but I wanted to give it another go. It hit much harder this time and is a body of work that I want to spend more time with. There is an unrelenting austerity, bordering on grimness, that is difficult to sit with, but the dignity with which the subjects are treated elevates it beyond poverty porn. Matt depicts the subjects as individuals, not ciphers for poverty, so it doesn’t feel exploitative. And my understanding is that he spent time with them to gain their trust and learn about their stories. There’s a lot of visual variety: stark street photos, environmental portraits and minimalistic, almost abstract landscapes. The dense typologies of cigarette packets, beggars' signs, and plastic forks didn’t work for me initially, but I like how the patterns they form en masse sit with the diary page grids of text. The only thing I still struggle with, beyond the subject matter and bleakness, is the crunchy black and white grade. Sometimes it tips over into a high-contrast B&W style reminiscent of bad street photography on Flickr.
• I noticed two potential problems with my M6 TTL — the rangefinder not quite lining up at infinity and the meter not working. I assumed that a dead battery was causing the latter, but a fresh one didn’t bring it back to life. After some back and forth with a helpful Redditor, I tried cleaning the contacts with a pencil eraser. Success! …well at least for half a day. The meter has crapped out again, and now that I’ve loaded film into the camera to check that everything else is working, I can’t fiddle with it. I’m going to finish my current roll and then see what I can do.
• Six month catch-up with some of the couples from our pre-natal course. Nice to see everyone, especially those that we haven’t been seeing socially in the intervening time. The large skylight in the pub’s dining area was creating a lovely slice of sunlight that cut along the edge of our table, so I started to take pictures. I was extra grateful for thought that the designers of the Ricoh GRIII put into its ergonomics as I was balancing a baby on one hip and shooting with my free hand. I think that these pictures of friends and family are some of the most important that we take. As photographers, we can use our skills to cut through the chaos and clutter to crystallise a moment shared. I sometimes feel that my job contributes nothing of value to the world, and in those existential periods, I find it helpful to focus on a less grand goal: adding a little more beauty to the world and to the lives of people that I love.

Some Links to Things that Made me Happy This Week

• @aleha_84’s pixel art
• notes art — surreal and beautiful sketches made daily in the Apple Notes app.
  • See this short video for a round up of the first year and the artist’s thinking behind the project: 365 – notes art
• Learn Music Theory in 29 minutes by Underdog Electronic Music School — one of the best breakdowns of the basics that I have watched. Oscar is a brilliant teacher who breaks down a complicated subject into easy to understand parts. I’ve been messing around on the piano again after a very long break, so it was great refresher to ideas dimly remembered.
• TN:106 Mura Masa - Tape Notes — I enjoyed hearing Alex Crossan breakdown the concepts and production behind his album, Demon Time. I liked that I key part of his process on this project was to do things because they made him laugh or he thought they were a little stupid. I’m drawn to people who can keep the creative process fun, rather than letting it become heavy or pretentious.
• Yuval Noah Harari: Crisis and tragedy in Israel - Part 1 on Leading. Alaister Campbell and Rory Stewart interview Harari on the pressures on Israeli democracy and ensuing unrest. Harari is incise and passionate as always.
• Commit Mono. Neutral programming typeface. — I have been using this wonderful minimalist typeface to write this post and everything else in Drafts this week. It’s designed for coding, but it’s a joy for writing and editing too. I love its simplicity and legibility. The website is a masterclass in design clarity too. It’s been released under the SIL Open Font License 1.1 license, so it can be used freely for both commercial and non-commercial purposes. Enjoy.
• Keyboard Shortcuts for Navigating Finder — sometimes it’s about finessing the basics… I was looking for a shortcut to do something specific but instead stumbled on this great breakdown featuring a host of shortcuts that I didn’t know. I’ve committed a bunch of them to memory but there were three stand outs for me:
  • using shift + cmd + G to activate Finder’s ‘Go’ command bar — you can search for any folder and hit enter to go direct. (I also use Alfred with custom parameters that target specific file types, so that I can search only folders or Lightroom catalogues)
  • moving files without using the mouse (or the command line): select the files you want to move -> hit cmd+ C to Copy them -> navigate to the desired destination (perhaps using the above tip) -> opt + cmd + V to move them, rather than paste them to the new location. I’ve been using this all the time since I found about about it.
  • hit shift + cmd + ? to open the Help menu, start to type the sort order you want, select it and hit enter, and get your view arranged correctly in seconds. This shortcut works in most apps, and is a great way to quickly access an action that doesn’t have a keyboard shortcut.
• Tony Hawk: Harnessing Passion, Drive & Persistence for Lifelong Success - Huberman Lab — self-recommending
• Aphex Twin - Windowlicker mini-doc — great video essay running through Richard David James’s musical development on the way to Windowlicker. I’ve always listened to bits and pieces of Aphex’s output, but I’ve never made the time to dig into it as a body of work. I’m remedying that at the moment and have had Drukqs, Selected Ambient Works 85-92 and Selected Ambient Works Volume II on repeat.
• Regrets List / Things I Did Good List — lastly after reading this post, I’ve made my own ‘regrets’ and ‘things I did good’ lists in Drafts, that I add to as things occur to me. It’s interesting how quickly patterns, both positive and negative, emerge when you are paying attention. I’m interested to see if I can convert noticing these patterns into lasting improvements and so will be continuing this experiment for at least another month.

“Civilization is a stream with banks. The stream is sometimes filled with blood from people killing, stealing, shouting and doing the things historians usually record, while on the banks, unnoticed, people build homes, make love, raise children, sing songs, write poetry and even whittle statues. The story of civilization is the story of what happened on the banks. Historians are pessimists because they ignore the banks for the river.” —Will Durant in LIFE magazine

From the excellent Writing Tools by Roy Peter Clark.

“You’ll never meet a hater who’s doing better than you.” — David Goggins

via Kallaway x Creator Lab

Week Notes 017 — W/E 30 July 2023

• No shoots booked — the first clear week in a couple of months. So nice to get time to clear up all the admin that was pushed aside in order to meet deadlines.
• Celebrated the flexible schedule by taking Monday morning off. ‘Swimming’ lesson with Baby first thing, then off to a baby friendly screening of Barbie at the Barbican. Joyful carnage on screen and off. By the end, there was a line of parents against one wall flinging their babies around in mystical patterns to encourage them to sleep. I enjoyed the film itself: it wore its cleverness lightly, and its dumbness proudly. Great lines, sharp outfits and incredible set design.
• The bulk of the week was spent choosing images for my new site and sequencing them. I’m getting really close — just waiting for some display issues to be resolved. I feel like my work has progressed by a step change in the last two to three years — and I can’t wait to share it and get back out on meetings. I’ve mostly replicated and expanded on the structure of my current site, and I’m working on a ‘Places’ category to encompass some travel, cityscape and interiors work. I need a ‘Street’ category for the personal section of my site too, now that I have enough work to fill it out.
• First time out with my wife sans baby on the weekend. My mum and sister wrangled the baby while we went to see Groundhog Day at the Old Vic. I’m allergic to musicals, but I thought it was brilliantly executed. The handling of the daily reset deftly conveyed the frustration of the protagonist and the surreality of the premise, while evolving enough not to bore the audience. Maintaining forward momentum in a story about going in circles is a hard task and I was impressed with how it was handled. Tim Minchin’s writing was acerbic, raucous and raunchy in equal measure. The leads were charismatic, but I didn’t feel the chemistry between them. The set pieces and inventiveness more than made up for the lack of passion though.
• Back to using kettlebells for simple and functional workouts that are easy to fit in when I have 15–30mins spare. Lots of press ups and bodyweight squats in the gaps too.
• My favourite browser, Arc, has reached v1.0. I’m very pleased for them as I have been using it for months now and it’s become an indispensable part of my digital life. I love browsing websites full screen, copying URLs with a keyboard shortcut and being able access anything I need in secs using their multi-context Command Bar. I’ve used all the big browsers and this is the first one that feels like it’s doing something new. Arc has ditched the waitlist, so I encourage everyone to check it out.
• I’ve discovered Underdog Electronic Music School’s excellent YouTube channel and have been making my way through his videos. He has a real gift for teaching concepts in a clear and concise manner. I found him through his breakdown of Fred Again..’s key techniques and thought his Music Theory in 29 Minutes was by far the simplest explanation I’ve watched of the basics of a confusing topic.
• I really enjoyed this Conversations with Tyler interview with Noam Dworman on Stand-Up Comedy and Staying-Open Minded. He’s the owner of the Comedy Cellar and it was interesting to hear his take on how comedy is changing and evolving.
• My photobooks are on the bottom of our bookshelves, next to the play mat (a terrible idea, but that’s another story.) When the baby is occupied chewing on whatever has fallen into her clutches, I’ve taken to dipping into some favourite books. I used to make a song and dance of sitting down with a photobook — waiting for good light and uninterrupted time. As a result, I rarely looked at them. Now, because I grab and browse when I have a spare five minutes, I’ve spent more time with my photobooks than I had in the last year. Exiles by Koudelka is the one that I keep returning too. The ground he covered and the variety of scenes that he witnessed are mind-boggling. And this doesn’t even speak to the incisive eye with which he captured them. On these recent flip-throughs I’ve appreciated the classics like the angel on the bike or the rocket man, but also fallen in love with pictures that I didn’t even realise were in the book. He is a master of mood, light, and layering. I can’t wait to read more about the life behind the pictures in The Making of Exiles which also awaits me on the shelf.