day 120 - looming plant

my goal is to become like an online poker player.

i think no one is ever born a natural at anything. any real skill requires time and effort to cultivate. i don't think of things in terms of talent, i think of things in terms of skills. if you practice something long enough, you'll develop a skill at it. the more you practice, the more skilled you become.

in the world of poker, there are great players. it takes time to become a great player, though. you have to play a lot of hands to get to the point where you know what to do with ace-ten six handed versus two handed. eventually you build up your skills to the point where you know what will happen if you play it this way, or that way. you've had enough experience (sat through enough hands) to build your skill to the point that you are a formidable poker player.

in the last few years there has been a number of very young poker players entering the scene who all play very very well. how, if they are so young, have they had the time to build up their skill?

it's because of online poker.

see, you can have as many games going simultaneously as you want in online poker. some people will play twenty or thirty poker games at the same time. it's not hard, since most of the time at the poker table you're sitting there waiting for someone else to figure out what they're going to do. if you're playing thirty games in the same amount of time as a traditional player plays one game, you're getting thirty times the amount of experience. you're testing different strategies, trying out ways of playing that might work and might not work. i'd say a year playing online poker that way is roughly equivalent to twenty years maybe of poker room playing experience.

anyways. there are photographers out there who have been shooting for thirty, forty years. they've used all kinds of equipment in all kinds of settings and come up with all kinds of lighting solutions. it's difficult to try and be a photographer without comparing your work to theirs.

but i'm hoping to create with this 365 project a situation like playing online poker.... i'm doing three or four photography setups a day, and i have been for the last six weeks or so. that's a lot of setups, that's a lot of experience. my work has definitely improved. i know my equipment better, and i know how to achieve different looks better. i can't tell how my work compares to people that have been doing this much longer than i have.... maybe they all went through times in which they did as many or more setups as i am.... but i'm definitely improving at an accelerated rate.

setup shot: