Who comes to the lesson

At a weekend makers' market in Amman, one of the organisers offered a free morning on photographing products, for any seller who wanted to sell more online.

The sellers who came were not the ones you would expect. The woman whose embroidered cushions already looked lovely in every picture was in the front seats with a notebook. So was the man whose carved wooden boards were always photographed in daylight on a clean table. They were the best at it in the whole market, and they were the most eager to learn.

The seller whose photographs were dark, crooked and taken on a cluttered counter did not come. Ask him why and the reasons are familiar. He is not a camera person. He would only slow the others down. He tried once and it did not help.

Each of those sounds like modesty. Underneath, most of them are the same thing: a reluctance to spend a morning being reminded of what he cannot yet do.

It is an understandable instinct and a costly one. Getting better at something like this is open to almost anyone who puts the hours in. Choosing to stay where you are, when better is on offer, is still a choice, and the market makes it visible every weekend in whose stall gets the second look.

The awkward part is that the front seats do not feel competent. The first thing any lesson teaches is how much there is still to learn. That feeling of being worse is not a sign that learning is failing. It is the first sign that it has started.