Whenever possible, work alone to boost your creativity.
What artists have long suspected has born out to be true, according to Susan Cain in her new book, Quiet. Years of experiments have shown collaboration tends to create fewer and lower quality ideas, compared to people creating on their own. Brainstorming, to remain effective, should be a solitary activity.
But my experience tells me that the work itself is also better when I’m alone. This could be dangerous if your chosen field is wildlife photography, but the creative center of your brain doesn’t care as much about your subject matter as the way it’s approached.
As much as other humans may give us comfort, telling us we are on the right track with an idea (see the popularity of Instagram and Flickr), art is about pushing ideas past where others are comfortable.
Together, we remain comfortable. Alone, we remain unique.
Some argue lesser photography vilifies gear serving “practical,” “efficient” or “appropriate” purposes. Not quite. Lesser photography is about the rejection of the notion of “practical,” “efficient” and “appropriate” in photography.
How many times have you been inspired by the “practical” nature of a photo?
Images corrupt and apps are unreliable. Your backups may not be backing up what you thought. Websites suffer neglect.
A few years after you die, your files may not even be readable, if someone even cares to look after them.
The truth is, there’s no such thing as an archival digital format. There’s nothing wrong with that necessarily for the photographer. The photographer’s enjoyment is in the moment.
Once a year, put your best images (stories) in a book. It’s not for you. It’s for anyone who enjoys a good story, even long after you’re gone.
- Seth Godin
(This is the core creativity problem in photography today: everyone is looking to external tools to solve an internal problem.)
“Just because you’re a photographer doesn’t mean every conversation has to revolve around the subject. Photography might be what you pursue but having a life outside of it is what ultimately serves as an inspiration for what you do with the camera.”
This week you’ll hear a lot about innovation in photography on your favorite blogs. Unfortunately, they’re talking about innovations in objects, not ideas.
How much time could you save and how much more could you learn, if you tuned out the blogs that fall in love with objects?
I’m appearing on 3 episodes this week of the 52 Pickup podcast, a members only podcast, from the excellent tech blog 52 Tiger. If you support great writing and unobtrusive tech blogs, it’s worth becoming a member (I did on day one).
We’re talking photography, tech and Van Halen.
My best friend, Tom, had a house fire in the 90s that destroyed all of his photos and negatives (during his most prolific period as an enthusiastic young hobbyist). As a result, he developed an entirely different way of approaching archivism and we all could learn something from it.
Recently, I was talking about my own archives from that same period and how I was going to deal with scanning the thousands of negatives I had amassed. I wanted to create a digital archive I could easily back up to avoid the same destruction Tom faced.
Tom advised me to revisit the places in those negatives and produce something better than I had produced back then. Then, throw away the old negatives. He gave me a few hundred new projects in under 5 seconds and I couldn’t wait to get started.
Life is fleeting and you can’t take your archives with you. Chances are, no one will tend to them even a few years after you’re gone. The real value in photography is an appreciation of the present.
