Me

Photo of me, taken by (I believe) Rob Cornfeld, a fellow Peace Corps Volunteer in Namibia. The photo is a high-resolution digital scan from a black and white negative taken in 1998.

Nangula

Photo of a fellow teacher, Nangula, at a workshop in Namibia, where I was a Peace Corps Volunteer from 1998 to 2000. Photo was taken in 1998 and is a high-resolution scan of a black and white negative.

Brukkaros

Brukkaros, an extinct volano (actually, according to this site, the remains of a gigantic explosion 84 million years ago), viewed at sunset from just outside my house in Tses, Namibia in 1999.

Girl

Once again, three versions of the same photo. The first photo is a high-resolution scan of a color print I took in Namibia in 1998. The second is in black and white. The third is adjusted slightly. The subject is a random student (not one of mine) in Engela, a village in northern Namibia.

Tangeni

Going along with yesterday's post, here are three versions of the same photo. The first photo is a high-resolution scan of a color print I took in Namibia in 1998. The second is adjusted with higher exposure and sharpness. The third is in black and white. My favorite is the second. The subject is Tangeni (I think, some of the names have faded from my memory). He was my neighbor in Engela, which is a tiny village in northern Namibia.

Cameah

Photography has been a hobby of mine since high school when I took a course in the developing and printing of black and white photos. One of the amazing things about the "digital age" is how quickly you can adjust photos. What used to take an hour or two in the darkroom can now be done in, literally, one or two minutes. I use iPhoto which, from what I understand, is an entry-level photo program. Yet, I am continually amazed at how easy it is to adjust photos and, in this case (I think) change a mediocre photo into a good one. Here are three versions of the same photo. The third (they uploaded in reverse order) is a high-resolution digital scan of a color print from a photo I took in Namibia in 1998. The second is the first adjustment I made, keeping the color. It took about 60 seconds. The first is the second adjustment I made, changing the original from color to black and white and changing the exposure and contrast levels. This took less than 60 seconds. The second one is my favorite. The photo is of Cameah, one of my favorite students from Engela, where I taught during my first year in the Peace Corps.

Saloma and Kiki

Two of my students from my first year as a teacher in Engela, Namibia.

Semeka

A recent photo I took while visiting teachers. This is an 8th grade student named Semeka.

Precious

A recent photo I took while visiting teachers. This is an 8th grader named Precious.

Talent

Anders Ericsson is the basis of this article. Ericsson's research is on deliberate practice and how, with some narrow exceptions, there is no such thing as natural talent:

Ericsson's theories confound the beliefs of thousands of years. Now as Conradi eminent scholar at Florida State University in Tallahassee, where he has been based since 1992, his basic argument is that there's probably no such thing as innate talent or, if there is, it's overrated. The only thing he will allow is that very occasionally certain physical gifts, such as height in a basketballer, will help. But in every other case, what's at work in such massive successes as golfer Woods is a complex cognitive process that pushes the body and mind to extraordinary heights.

And almost anyone can do it. He says with the careful syntax of a true boffin: "With the exception of the influence of height and body size in some sports, no characteristic of the brain or body has yet been shown to constrain an individual from reaching an expert level."

Deliberate practice, whether it's applied to sport or business or the arts, begins in the brain. This isn't a child doing an hour of piano scales every day while imagining the fun they will have afterwards. Instead, what makes someone spectacular in their field - and keeps them there - is training via a kind of focused, repetitive practice in which the subject is always monitoring his or her performance, correcting, experimenting, listening to immediate and constant feedback, and always pushing beyond what has already been achieved.

Ericsson's theory has enormous ramifications for parents, students, teachers and managers. It also puts the kybosh on the idea that critical feedback is damaging.

"If you're in an accepting world, then people don't develop or get better," he states. "They're in a kind of time warp." Of the way star performances often look so easy, he says: "For expert performers, there's always effort. Improvement is never effortless."