The other day, Paramount Pictures put up a ten-minute mini-documentary showing some of the preparation and training that Tom Cruise and the production crew went through to perform just one of the insane stunts from the next installment of Mission: Impossible. I say just one because I’m sure that the film is loaded with them. I mean, it’s a Tom Cruise movie, so there can’t be just one, right? There might be one that everyone talks about, like hanging off of the side of an Airbus A400M as it takes off, or flying a helicopter through a 360-degree corkscrew dive, or performing 106 HALO jumps with a broken ankle just to get three shots, or…well, you get the idea. To say the man is focused is an understatement. Whether you love him or hate him, when it comes to leaving it all in the frame, I can’t think of another filmmaker more dedicated to the craft of making movies and entertaining audiences than Tom Cruise—and he’s been doing it for decades.
Watching the film got me wondering what it feels like to be Tom Cruise. Not the money or the fame, but to have that level of dedication and skill, not to mention the self-confidence—which is a whole other thing—and to be able to channel those things and bring them into everything you do.
At one point in the documentary, Tom is getting ready for a jump and he looks at the camera and says, “Don’t be careful. Be competent.” On the surface, that might sound glib but just for this film, it comes on the back of more than 500 skydives and more than 15,000 motorcycle jumps which builds on decades of other skills and abilities that he’s spent countless hours accumulating. I think what Tom is consistently able to tap into is that what he does is in large part a byproduct of the preparation and the effort he puts into developing the skills required for the task. Through relentless repetition and auditing the results, which is critical, he masters the skills he needs to the point that he no longer has to consciously think about them and instead can simply trust that what he’s learned will take him where he needs to go.
How many of us do that?
When you watch the best of the best do what they do, I believe what you’re watching is not conscious thought, at least not in the sense that they are thinking about step one, step two, and so on, but rather purposeful muscle memory driving mindful action towards a desired result. And to be clear, it doesn’t always work. Things happen that you can’t see coming and can’t possibly control. In the case of Tom Cruise, he famously broke his ankle filming Mission: Impossible 6 on a stunt that he spent months preparing for. Things still happen, but putting in the effort to develop and hone the skills you need means that they happen less. I think.
To bring this around to something closer to my, and maybe your, wheelhouse, how many of you photographers spend the time to really master your cameras, to the point that they simply disappear into your workflow? The same goes for Photoshop, which will suck up as much time and attention as you can throw at it and still leave you feeling like you’ve barely scratched the surface. Or, if you’re a writer, have you learned things like punctuation, grammar, and what your unique voice is to the point that you don’t have to struggle with basic mechanics and structure that might take you out of a flow state? I think that’s what we’re talking about—developing skills and mastering the tools we use to the point where they can act as catalysts that can help get us into a flow state.
Unfortunately, people like shortcuts. When I was teaching Photoshop several years ago, one of the lessons I prepared was on black and white conversion. I had recently read Vincent Versace’s terrific book Welcome to Oz, which features a chapter that outlines a very detailed conversion process that gives you a ton of control over the final look of the image. I think Vincent is one of the best technical photographers I’ve ever seen and I was excited to share his techniques with my class. So, I bring in my notes and examples to class and I spend about 45 minutes going through Vincent’s steps to convert a color image to black and white. We finish the lesson and the final file is up on the screen and and it looks great and at this point someone in the back raises his hand and I ask if he has a question. “Yeah,” he says. “That’s great and all, but couldn’t you just use desaturate?” Sure, you could and there’s certainly a time and a place and even value in having shortcuts. But preparation helps you know where and when taking a shortcut makes sense or why you might be better off taking a more elaborate or nuanced approach.
My dad used to tell me that a job well done is its own reward, which is a big part of why I value effort so much. But I think there’s also a practical side to preparation and effort that goes beyond the satisfaction of a job well done or even in knowing how to approach a given situation and that is that those skills can be transferrable and used in other contexts, which make you more marketable.
Knowing and being adept at more things means that you are able to bring your unique expertise to more areas than if you specialized in just one thing or simply relied on shortcuts. It also gives you options and makes you more versatile and subsequently better able to deal with uncertainty and unpredictability. While it may not be a matter of life and death as it often is for Tom Cruise, thorough preparation can absolutely be a game changer in how and what we’re able to create.
For Christmas, Adrianne got me a wonderful book called The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows by John Koenig. We saw it in Kramers on a recent afternoon in DC and from the moment I picked it up and flipped through it, I knew I wanted a copy. It’s a book that’s hard to describe, but one review I read summed it up perfectly: “It’s undeniably thrilling to find words for our strangest feelings…Koenig casts light into lonely corners of human experience…An enchanting book.“
One of the definitions from the book:
aulasy
n. the sadness that there’s no way to convey a powerful memory to people who weren't there at the time—driving past your childhood home to show it to a friend, or pointing at a picture of a loved one you lost, only to realize that to them it’s just another house, just another face.
One of the things I think many of us misunderstand about shortcuts is they all derived from a lengthier process. Without those, there would be no shortcuts. I recall in university about learning the fundamentals of mathematic or engineering principles and the learning the shortcuts afterwards. It made me appreciate the process of “doing” even more.
Yes I’m just as guilty of going straight to shortcuts in some of my work, but learning the background and the process makes it all worthwhile if one is willing to be patient and learn. Thanks for the great post.
Ah, a topic much on my mind these days. I just began shooting 4X5 for many different reasons but mainly to shake up the status quo, and that it has done in spades. Not only have I been plagued with one tech challenge after another, which on a distraction level is Ok, but now it's starting to drive a larger and larger question of why am I doing this and what am I missing while I'm doing it?
On the morning walk just now you said something which I believe to be true, 'having a new camera doesn't make you see any differently.' No, it doesn't but I wonder if it could? I do find new tools to be exciting and inspiring. That does help us see differently if only for a moment or two.
So I took my son into the backyard on New Year's day in a pretty cool outfit he got for Christmas (a totally hip '70's - 80's poly shirt and acid washed jeans) to make a couple shots with the 45. Light was great, he looked great, I thought my vision was 'on' and his outfit was a great fun clash with the wooded environment of the backyard. But I approached the shot in a way I would have with my FF digital camera and when I looked upon the ground glass all I could think was 'oh no, this is dreadfully boring.' I ended up making four exposures of him which I will process today or tomorrow but what I think I may have missed was an opportunity to really document my son at this stage of his life, 21 about to graduate college, with a tool that was more about me than him. Is that right or wrong? I watched the nice light disappear as I fiddled, I missed the poses he experimented with as I fiddled, he said "how's this look?" I said "it doesn't look like you." To which he responded "What if I don't want to look like what you interpret me to look like? What if I want to change and be somebody different?" Good question, and I missed that shot.
I mentioned to you guys during another previous walk that I would take the 45 camera to work with me. I did last week and it was a disaster. Came away with one frame of film literally jammed into the back of the camera because of the cold weather. The image is fogged and soft and has some nasty contamination from my transferring the film with a drop of water on my finger (rookie mistake) and on top of it all, it's boring as hell. To say it's a disappointment is a giant understatement, It's not even good in a 'bad' way.
So although there are far more levels to this story I think there is an exercise here in learning this tool, at least for a little while longer. It's making me think differently about approach, about what's important, about craft, and maybe using the tool well enough so it doesn't get in the way of a different vision. Hopefully it's about really seeing a little more clearly what the final objective is. It's certainly a challenge and although I was getting ready to throw the towel in the other day I have a couple negs hanging in the drying cabinet now that may actually be worth looking at.
So the exercise of training this particular tool may become futile in the long run but it's expanding my knowledge base in ways I hadn't anticipated, or maybe that I had hoped for. It brings to mind something I keep hearing these days, that failure is the springboard to growth. It remains to be seen how this will affect my work in the long run but it's turning out to be an interesting journey. If I look past all the problems in that one frame I made at work I see something just a hair different there. I wonder what I will see when I process my son's pictures. Hopefully something worthwhile and not just that feeling of missed opportunity. Fingers crossed. :-)
Happy New Year. d