On Being A Creative - Part 2

Reading through the journals of photographers on dA I all too often see people complaining about how they have nothing to shoot. Nothing could be further from the truth. There are images around us all the time, every where you look. Have you ever been on a group shoot? Have you noticed how, although you're all in the same place everyone seems to be shooting different directions, different subjects, using different lenses and different settings, and when you get back and look through
everyone's shots, they are all so different? That's because we all see, and interact with, the world differently, based on our personalities, our experiences and the way we have learned.

One of my favourite expressions is, "Think outside the box." About 8 years ago I told CircuitDruid that she needed to think outside the box. She turned around and retorted, "You don't even have a box!" It was one of the loveliest things anyone has ever said to me. It's a bit of a quantum conundrum, akin to Schrodinger's Cat. How can you be in the box, and thinking outside it at the same time. It's the troglodyte's in the cave all over again. Without knowing there is an outside the box, how can you think there? Hopefully I'll be able to give you a few tricks and tools to think outside your creative's box as a photographer.

It is an irony in modern life that, whilst we have more choices and information available to us now than at any point in human history it often doesn't seem to help. One of the best photographic exhibitions I ever saw was by a group of Lithuanian photographers living under Soviet rule at that time. Film and equipment was hideously expensive. There was basically one type of camera available, a limited number of lenses and the choice of about 4 film speeds. That was pretty much it. Yet the work they produced was sublime. I contend that the easiest way to think outside a box is to start with a very small box. That way there is a lot more spce outside available to do your thinking in. Choice and information overload can paralyse a person, leading to inaction, and the fear/flight/fight response of retreating to what is known and "safe". Remove that choice, and you are forced to find other ways to get around problems and solve them.

Today's photographic world offers an amazing array of equipment, tools and techniques to the photographer. It's too often all too easy to rely on them, rather than the cleverest, most adaptable, teachable and technically sophisticated tool at the creative's disposal: your mind. Exposure, shutter speed, film speed, lens length, format, lighting, post-processing tools, point of view, point of focus, composition, location, subject, genre, printing media and surfaces, framing.. the list of variables is daunting.

So, this fortnight were going to start a series that makes the box small, and limits your range of choices enormously. I'm going to start with the one that most people complain about. "I have nothing to shoot." This fortnight, apart from the 20-30 minutes you have already devoted daily to doing photography related things, you're going to make 2 appointments with yourself to do shoots. The limiting factor is that you're not allowed off the property you live on. You have to shoot the mundane, the everyday in and around your house, apartment block, tee pee in the wilderness or where ever you live. You can use any lens,

camera, settings, lighting etc you like, but the images must be taken in your immediate, familiar environment. The idea here is to concentrate on getting as many different images as you can. Not just photograph different objects, but photograph them differently. Experiment. Make mistakes. make lots of mistakes. The more mistakes you make, the more material you have to learn from. You have to give yourself permission to make mistakes. Actually, you should demand that you make mistakes.

Think about the range of subjects available to you. Family, kitchen utensils, the dead spider behind the bookshelf, the inside of your roof, your family killing spiders with kitchen utensils in the roof cavity, stuff in the garden, the garage, the spare bedroom that is stuffed so full that you can barely take a step into... Think about what different lenses you can use, the immense variety of lighting, from that dreadfully warm and weak bedside light to the fluoros in the kitchen, available light from windows, or the hole in the roof you haven't got around to fixing since the tree fell on the house in 1978. Be imaginative. Be different. Be ridiculous. Be, well, creative.

By way of encouragement, my offer is this; send me the three best examples of "making do" in different ways within the limits I have set, and I will feature the best ones in the next article. That's a two week feature as a reward for doing your homework. The images must have been taken after this article is published (start date 21st June, 2009) and sent to me by midnight Australian EST on the 4th of July, 2009.