Practice Makes...

As much as I hated taking statistics in college, it is that course more than anything else that has kept me humping the dream of being successful at any type of art. It was in that class that I learned about the “law of large numbers”. This is the law that keeps Vegas alive. To explain:

Let’s say you flip a coin 10 times. The odds of flipping heads are 50/50 yet it is entirely possible that all 10 flips might come up tails. The law of large numbers states that if you continue to flip that coin several more times the odds will gradually grow closer to 50/50.

Everything is chance including art. The law of large numbers is why some of Woody Allen’s recent films have not been that great. The man makes approximately a film a year. Throughout the 70s and 80s these films were by and large excellent. From the 90s onward that trend has reversed itself. Woody’s career is quickly approaching 50/50.

This is why I keep writing and taking photographs. I figure if I keep doing something over and over again I will eventually generate good work. I will also generate a lot of horrible tripe but it comes with the territory.

On a somewhat related note I have noticed in the past few months that many of my photos look the same compositionally.

I attribute this to the fact that for nearly three years I was taking hundreds of pictures a day at Goofy’s Kitchen. It is my belief that if you do anything enough a style will start to emerge. Whether or not that style is any good is for others to decide.

OK I am done with this mental masturbation. Go about you business.