Zenologue

One of the biggest challenges facing myself and other professional photographers is how to stay continually creative – how to produce images that are full of life and energy that force us to develop and grow as artists. This is especially true in the current economic climate and with today’s hectic lifestyle, with all the stress and worry that comes with the territory of trying to run a successful business.

Stress is apparently one of the archenemies of creativity, and it can quickly lead to feeling unmotivated or being unable to create work that feels new, fresh and uplifting. If we are already tired before we begin, and feeling burned-out, we can come back from a photography session feeling unsatisfied with the results. This leads to a sense of insecurity, lack of confidence in what we’re doing, and even more stress.

If we aren’t careful, we might become locked into an ever-decreasing circle that could lead to more serious consequences, such as depression – with disastrous consequences for our business.

It’s all too easy to succumb to this cycle, and even easier to blame everything else for the problems we face (the economy, where we live, other responsibilities, even the weather), but how do we combat this and stay positive and creative?

I don’t pretend to have anything close to all the answers to this question, which is why I invite comments from anyone who might have any insight on this subject – I’m sure it will make for a lively discussion. However, I have found some things that can certainly help me at least and thought I would share them here.

Personal Assignments

When business is slow, I’ve found that setting myself small but interesting photographic assignments really helps to get the creative juices flowing again. The important factor here is small. Anything too ambitious (at least to begin with) can take too much time to complete and it’s easy to come up with excuses not to complete it. For example, take a drive to a nearby town you haven’t visited before, and spend a couple of hours photographing the architecture, textures and moods of the place.

The process of photographing something new and interesting helps to regenerate our inner photographic eye and gives us new ideas and concepts to throw into the creative mix.

Pretend You’re Still Using Film

Okay, if you are using film then you won’t need to pretend, but if you are using digital set yourself a limit of 36 exposures on a single project and stick to it. Don’t cheat by deleting any of the images (remember, film had no delete button!). Choose a simple subject and study it by eye and then try to capture as many facets of it as possible in just 36 exposures.

Then, take a second “roll” of the same subject and keep repeating this while continuously aiming to make every photograph different. It’s quite a challenge, but also a lot of fun.

Having a relatively small number of frames to work with really makes us focus more on each individual image, forcing us to consider every element of composition, arrangement, perspective, focus and exposure before we press the shutter release.

I personally find this kind of project very effective at rekindling the flame of creativity and becoming excited about photography all over again. 

Networking

Some of us can overlook one very great resource for support – our colleagues in the industry. In my experience, most photographers are willing and eager to share knowledge, tips and help with others. There are a small few that think that just talking to another photographer amounts to industrial espionage, but they are thankfully few and far between.

Nowadays, thanks to Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, forums, chat rooms and all the other methods of social networking, it’s easy to hook up with other photographers in your area (or anywhere else in the world) to discuss such topics as staying creative and other issues that we face on a daily basis.

Why not see if one or more of your local group of photographers would like to go on a fun day of shooting to a local State park or other suitable location? This is a great opportunity to get to know each other better and feed off each other’s creativity. With a bunch of professionals all together in one place like that, there’s bound to be an element of friendly competition too, further fuelling one’s creative fires.

When you foster these kinds of relationships with your peers, you might find that referrals start to come your way if other photographers are unable to take a job for one reason or another, leading to more business for you.

Keep Busy

One of the worst things we can do when things get on top of us, or we feel stressed out with everything is to give up and do nothing. It’s too easy to sit at the computer or by the phone waiting for the calls to come in, but this can lead to feeling more despondent, burned-out and even less creative.

The answer to this is to stay busy – work around the house, catch up on some gardening, wash the car, go for a walk, go to the gym, the library. Anything, in fact, that will take your mind away from the worries of work for a while.

Like many of us, I work from home, and find myself at home most of the time, working on marketing, advertising, accounting, the web site etc. I’ve discovered many times that housework is a wonderful thing to do if I need to think about something. It’s amazing what 20 minutes of vacuuming can do to help relax the mind and solve a problem!

Study Other Photographers

Sometimes, after a photography session, I come back feeling disappointed that I wasn’t able to be as creative as I wanted to be with the photographs. Maybe the location wasn’t perfect, the light was difficult, or the people were not into the idea of being a little different.

Whatever the reason, this is one of the things that can really make a dent in our confidence as artists. Even though the photographs we just created are fine and the clients loved them, we can still feel they lack a certain style or element of uniqueness, making us wonder why we didn’t try this or that at the time.

I’ve found that studying the work of other photographers whom I admire has really helped in this area. I’m not suggesting that you should copy their work, far from it, but we can create new work based on some of the core ideas. By taking elements from a variety of sources we can develop a new look that is distinctly our own.

This is a slow process and I would suggest working on just a few new things at one time. However, when it comes to a photography session, it makes it a lot easier to try something a little different that we might not otherwise have thought about.

Dare To Be Different

One of the killers of our creativity is a sense of monotony or feeling that all our images are becoming the same. Familiarity breeds contempt, and if we do the same thing every time and produce the same photographs, we risk becoming bored with our own work and caring less about what we do.

Striving to be different really forces us to tap into our creative resources. The key here is to experiment: try a new perspective, a different lighting arrangement, alternative poses, a new lens, fresh locations, different post-processing or anything else that can make your images feel a little different, at least to you.

Give Yourself A Break

It is important, too, to take a rest from it all every once in a while. All work and no play make Jack a dull boy, as they say, so take some time to recharge the batteries. Spend some time doing something you enjoy that isn’t related to photography or work and, preferably, that doesn’t involve the computer. Being outside, or with other people in a social environment helps us remain emotionally connected with society.

Conclusion

Creativity is at the very core of what we do – without it we’re unable to function as artists and photographers. It is therefore vital that we never lose sight of that fact or allow external factors to rob us of our gift.

I’m sure there are many other ways than those presented here to cultivate and stay in touch with our creativity, and I think it would be a wonderful idea to see any comments and suggestions people have in this area… I look forward to seeing them and posting them here.

As always, thank you for reading.

Motivation attitude, creative, creativity, encouragement, Motivation, professional photographer, success

Last night I stepped outside at around 8:40pm to watch the International Space Station (ISS) make a pass over the area, something I like to do whenever the opportunity presents itself and the sky is clear. I took my stepdaughter, Amy, outside with me to see the event, and we stood there waiting as a crescent moon floated high overhead in a starry sky.

Right on time, the ISS became visible in the distance. Although the sun had set some time ago, the ISS is so high that it reflects the dull red glow of the sun’s light filtered through the atmosphere (much like the color of a sunset). The moving point of light grew brighter and became more yellow as it climbed higher in the sky, until it was the brightest object in the sky, other than the moon itself.

As I stood there, quietly marveling at the fact that six people were hurtling through space at 18,000 mph in a large tin can, 220 miles above my head, Amy calmly says, “I’m cold,” shrugged and disappeared inside.

Over the next minute, the ISS silently glided across the sky until it entered the Earth’s shadow and faded from view, but I was lost in thought about how things have changed in the world since I was Amy’s age.

When I was 12 years old, in 1974, the Apollo moon program was in full swing (although sadly about to be cancelled), and astronauts were frequently in the news as they bounded about on the lunar surface, collecting samples and singing about the merry month of May. In Europe, Concorde had just started to grace the skies in her supersonic glory, and the whole world seemed full of promise and hope for the future, even despite events like the Vietnam War.

I became seriously interested in astronomy at about that time and remember the excitement we felt watching satellites and Skylab float overhead. At that time, there were no CD players, DVD players, Internet, email, iPhones, iPods, digital cameras, Xbox’s or PS3s. Tweeting was a noise our pet budgie made when it was happy, a PC was a policeman, while a MAC was something you wore to go outside in the rain. There was no worldwide web, surfing was what people in California did, and space stations in the sky were the product of sci-fi writers.

When I was Amy’s age, I could only imagine what it might be like to see an actual space station like the ISS glide across the sky. But now, it seems, it’s just a commonplace event, nothing to be marveled over.

In fact, if someone had told me at the age of 12 that I would someday be able to stand in my own garden, photograph a space station with a camera that didn’t even use film, and then potentially send the image to anyone else in the world from my own computer within minutes, I don’t think I would have believed them.

For all the technological achievements we’ve made over the last 35 years, we appear to have lost at least one thing: wonder.

In the time it took me to ponder all this and step back inside, maybe five minutes, the ISS had traveled over 1500 miles. How many more eyes like ours had peered up from the ground to observe it, I wonder?

Then, this morning, I read an interesting news article from the BBC News site regarding the ISS and how the US and Russia are quarreling over the use of the toilet facilities and an exercise bike on the ISS (click here for the news story). It seems that even those up in the sky might have lost something too…

What has all this to do with being a professional photographer? Not much you might think. But then I thought of it like this: Imagine what we can do with our craft if we can only rekindle the spark of wonder in the eye of humanity. What we see with our eyes and feel with our hearts can truly be felt in those who treasure our work…

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Unless you’ve been on another planet for the last few months, you’ve probably heard the word “recession” more times than you would have liked to. The news is full of it, mainly because negative material like that is more newsworthy – have you noticed how the [few] positive stories on the news are at the end of the reports, and are given the least amount of air-time?

All this negativity flying around is one reason why I really try hard to limit my exposure to the news during the day, and I try very hard not to look at it at all before at least noon.

But it isn’t just the news – it’s all around us; the people we talk to on the phone, our family, friends, neighbors, Facebook friends, Tweeters and all those other folks we connect to online. Everyone, it seems, is convinced that the end of the world is on its way.

Sure, business is down for everyone compared to previous years, and many people are facing some hard times, but the economy isn’t brain-dead yet. It might be on life-support, but we’re not going to give up and simply pull the plug.

So, how we do get up in a morning and fire ourselves up to being enthusiastic about what we’re doing? How do we “attack the day like birds of prey” [as the rock band Rush might say] with the passion and expectation that this is going to be the best day ever?

Napoleon Hill, the author of “Think and Grow Rich”, said something to the effect that we are the result of what goes into our minds. In other words, we become what we think about. So, if we get out of bed in a morning with the idea that today is going to be awful, that we’ll make no sales, our latest photography project will be bland and uncreative, or that we’re just not going to make it, then that is probably what will happen. Then, later that day, when we go to bed, tired and miserable, we can say to ourselves, “see, I just knew today was going to be a bad day!” It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

But, can the reverse be true? What happens if we fight off those negative thoughts and fill our minds instead with hope, encouragement and a determination to succeed no matter what the odds? How much more creative can we be, as photographers or business-people, when our minds are happily involved with thoughts of having a good day? What if we take action and become proactive instead of reactive? What kind of day will it be if we have a positive attitude?

Instead of turning on the news in a morning (or even the weather for that matter), listen to a motivational tape or read an inspirational book instead. I even heard recently that people who laugh in the morning are more likely to have a good day, because laughter, being the great medicine it is, generates positive thoughts. Maybe a good joke or two can help.

Personally, as a photographer, I find that spending some time to absorb the work of other photographers who inspire me helps tremendously. Just 30 minutes to an hour spent like this at the beginning of the day to think, study and plan is worth a great deal.

If you’re reading this and thinking to yourself, “that will never work for me”, then why not just give it a try? You have nothing to lose and you can at least try to prove me wrong… Just try it for one week and see if you feel any different.

The way I look at it is this: If you feel positive on the inside, you can’t help but look positive on the outside. Other people see what’s on the outside and will enjoy talking and working with you more. Feeling positive makes us smile and it’s often said that a smile can be heard on the phone. Now, if your prospects “hear” that smile, it just gives them one more reason why they should choose to work with you… and we all know that more work means we’re a little closer to beating the odds.

Motivation attitude, encouragement, inspiration, Motivation, positive, professional photographer, success