First imitate, then innovate

An interesting idea from the fruitfultime blog (which is different from fruit, full-time which is sponsored by the citrus growing industry).

When you're learning something new, focus on imitating what other, successful people have done. Once you've learned that, then start trying to do things differently.

In their words:

"To think creatively, be innovative, come up with new ideas, build new stuff, you first need to learn all that is currently known about the topic of interest. Only then can you push the envelope and be innovative. To become proficient in any subject, skill, profession, or sport, you need to be determined and disciplined.

In other words, you first need to master yourself, your core skills. You need to learn how to become more efficient, effective, disciplined, determined, and focused."

This makes a lot of sense to me. I've gotten (re)interested in photography these last several months, and rather than just going out and trying to take cool pictures, I found a wonderful book, and I'm trying to replicate some of the techniques and composition that he uses. In one section, he talks about panning the camera to follow a moving subject. Here's a picture of one of the runners that I took at one of Joshua's cross-country meets.

Cool, huh? Not particularly innovative, but better than what I would have done otherwise.