PixelatedImage Blog

One of the things I am most constantly grateful for is being able to make a living in a creative field. The flipside of course is working at the mercy of inspiration and creativity – two commodities that are, at times, worryingly sparse. I can’t be the only creative that feels a need to use creativity-management techniques.

Here’s my top three.

Focus on the Positive
I remember once telling someone I hated a particular movie. She told me I was being negative. I replied, Ok, I’m positive I hated the movie. Not what she meant, apparently.

When it comes to being creative I do not work well in the negative and on the right day, folks, can I ever find the negative. I can give you a million reasons a shot won’t work, a piece of gear isn’t ideal, the lens I have is wrong, the light is crap, and that – in point of fact – the world is conspiring against me.

But creativity doesn’t do so well in those conditions. Creativity needs a constant flow of possibility, and negativity stops that flow with No instead of Yes. If you’ve ever done theatre sports or improv you know this – when people go with the flow and say yes, work with the given scenarios, it develops a life of it’s own. When they say no, they stop the whole process dead in its tracks.

So instead, go with it. Natural lighting is harsh? Create images with a starker look, use the opportunity to use your reflectors, or find some shade. Lens isn’t creating the look you want? Use this as a chance to experiment with a new look. Whatever the challenge, getting frustrated puts me into a decidedly non-creative space and then I’m useless to solve the problem creatively because I’ve killed the one thing I have going for me – creativity. So role with it, refuse to get side-swiped by your frustration – find a way to go with the current rather than fight it.

Find Your Space
Creative people do not work in all spaces equally. For some their best creative space is at a coffee shop somewhere, or a park, a certain room of their home, or corner of their office. For some that space is not a place at all but a time – early morning, late at night. And for others still that space is a set of conditions – some work better with music, some with coffee, still others – particularly french poets -  under the influence of opiates, syphilis, and absinthe. I recommend the music and coffee, myself.

Whatever conditions work best for you it’s good to be conscious of them. It’s also good to try not to allow your creativity to be defined by them. Discovering why you work more creatively in a certain space will allow you to harness your creativity in broader and broader spaces. I’ve recently discovered that my best creative space works, in part, due to solitude. But the reason the solitude helps is the lack of pressure and expectations from others. Just discovering this has made it easier to be at my most creative even when others are around – I just need to control the voices and inputs, to not allow myself to give them heed. I can’t explain it much more than that, so I hope this is resonating with some of you enough that you can do something with it.

Give Yourself Constraints
I’ve written about this before and the more I live and work reliant on creativity the more I believe it to be true: creativity works best within certain boxes, not in a lack of them. Read more HERE if you’re interested, but for now let me suggest an exercise. The next time you are feeling jammed up creatively, put all the fancy zoom lenses and gadgets aside and put one lens – a Lensbaby or Fisheye, or crappy old plastic 50mm – on an old body and go to the park and play. Or shoot something more serious but limit yourself to one optic. If you always shoot longer optics, put your widest on. If you always shoot vertical, shoot horizontal.

Problem solving works best when you have an actual problem, creativity works best when it has something about which it needs to be creative. That can come most easily through a lack of options. And aside from pushing you to use that creative capacity you’ve been blessed with, it will also be good training for the times you work for others and limits are not chosen by you but imposed upon you by your client, the location, the models, the weather or any other of the myriad things in life that lie without our control.

Creativity is a beautiful thing but when it comes to making  a living from it, the more you understand how it works for you, the better. Got a favourite creative exercise or “out” when things get uninspired? Leave a comment, share the lovin’.

Have a great weekend.