The beauty of taking a photo every day | James Tran | TEDxUNSW Salon

Key Concepts:

• Attention and presence as a form of "seeing."
• Bridging the gap between vision and execution in creative work.
• Dailies project (taking a photo every day for a year).
• Analysis paralysis and its impact on creative output.
• Iteration vs. perfectionism.
• Quantity vs. quality in creative development.
• Noticing beauty in everyday life.

1. The Blind Masseuse and a New Way of Seeing:

• The speaker recounts an experience at a rundown massage parlor in Kuala Lumpur.
• The masseuse was blind, and his perception of the speaker's body was through touch, not sight.
• Quote: "Everything has beauty but not everyone sees it by Confucious." This quote was on the wall of the massage room.
• The speaker, a photographer, realized that "seeing" isn't just about having eyes but about attention, presence, and noticing.
• The experience reshaped the speaker's approach to photography, focusing on small details and everyday beauty.

2. The Struggle to Share the Vision:

• The speaker struggled to make others see the beauty he was capturing.
• There was a gap between the speaker's vision and the quality of the photography.
• The question arose: How to bridge the gap between where you are and where you want to be creatively?

3. The Dailies Project: A Year of Daily Photography:

• The speaker attempted a "dailies" project: taking and sharing a photo every day for a year.
• The first attempt failed due to analysis paralysis and perfectionism.
• The speaker would obsess over details, tweak endlessly, and abandon projects.
• Striving for perfectionism was not conducive to creative output.

4. The Second Dailies Attempt: Focus on Showing Up:

• The speaker made a second attempt at the dailies project with renewed determination.
• The focus was on simplicity: a daily deadline to capture and share something, no matter what.
• The speaker didn't have the luxury of overthinking.
• Instead of striving for perfection, the focus was on showing up consistently.
• This shift led to momentum and iteration replaced perfectionism.
• Each day of creation led to learning and improvement.

5. The Ceramics Professor Experiment: Quantity vs. Quality:

• The speaker shares a story from the book "Art & Fear" about a ceramics professor.
• The professor divided the class into two groups: one graded on quantity (making as many vases as possible) and the other on quality (creating one perfect vase).
• The students in the quantity group produced the best vases by the end of the semester.
• They failed, adjusted, experimented, and refined their processes naturally.
• The quality group spent time theorizing, planning, and worrying about their one shot at perfection.
• The experiment illustrates that perfectionism is the enemy of progress.

6. The Impact of the Dailies Project:

• The dailies project helped the speaker develop a fascination with capturing light.
• The speaker began to see beauty in everyday moments and overlooked places.
• The masseuse, despite being blind, gave the speaker a new way of seeing.
• The daily photography project trained the speaker to observe, trust the process, and capture what others might overlook.
• The goal wasn't postcard-worthy images or jaw-dropping views, but simply the act of noticing.
• The speaker wasn't showing people a new world but showing them their own world differently.

Synthesis/Conclusion:

The speaker's journey highlights the importance of shifting from a perfectionist mindset to one of consistent creation and observation. The experience with the blind masseuse underscored the idea that "seeing" is about attention and presence, not just physical sight. The dailies project, despite initial setbacks, ultimately fostered a deeper appreciation for everyday beauty and the power of iterative improvement. The key takeaway is that by focusing on showing up, embracing experimentation, and noticing the world around us, we can bridge the gap between our creative vision and its realization.