PixelatedImage Blog

Chase Jarvis and I were talking about this troublesome vision stuff a couple weeks ago, not in those words, per se, but the same idea. We were shaking our heads over the technical addiction our craft suffers from and wondering why it seems so terminal at times. I wish I could say we came up with answers but really it was just a bull session not an attempt to save the world. The reason I bring this up, and am dragging Chase into the matter is that Chase is a very successful commercial photographer and it’s striking to me that this stuff is important to him; it’s not just artsy fartsy pie-in-sky stuff.

One of the ideas that came out was of the nature of vision, and the need to nurture our creative side at all costs. Chase looks at his career as a creative person through a very simple paradigm. You create and share it, then you do whatever you have to to sustain that create and share cycle. Create and share is the role of the artist, sustaining it is the practical stuff. You sustain it through waiting tables or finding clients to buy your work, as well as doing whatever it takes to feed your creative self.

Anyways, that’s not the thought that stuck with me, though I’m continuing to mull over Chase’s Create-Share-Sustain paradigm because I think it simplifies things for me without sacrificing the heart of the matter.

One of my favourite poets is Gerard Manley Hopkins, a 17th century Jesuit poet with a penchant for really dense wordplay. Among my favourite poems is 34. As Kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies draw flame. Here are the lines I’m thinking of:

As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies dráw fláme;
As tumbled over rim in roundy wells
Stones ring; like each tucked string tells, each hung bell’s
Bow swung finds tongue to fling out broad its name;
Each mortal thing does one thing and the same:
Deals out that being indoors each one dwells;
Selves—goes itself; myself it speaks and spells,
Crying Whát I do is me: for that I came.

If you can make it through the density of words, there’s a great little idea in there – that we mortals, as part of our being, reveal on the outside what is on the inside. It’s what we do. Our outer lives reflect our inner lives.

So why bring this up and why do it in the most obscure way possible by referring to a poet most haven’t heard of and fewer want to read? For two reasons.

One, the poetry of Hopkins and others, like Donne, inspires me. It is one of the wells to which I go to replenish my inner life, so it’s in places like this that I get my ideas and some of the handles that help me explain my ideas, if only to myself. There’s a richness in Hopkins’ wordplay that I’d like to one day see in my images.

And two, if Hopkins is right, then what’s on the inside will out itself in our images and the act of refilling our creative well and tending to our inner life is important, vital. There’s so much talk about being a better photographer, so little about being a deeper human being. It matters because it will show. A kind person is more likely to create work that reflects that kindness. A shallow one more likely to create shallow work, and so on. Sure, study histograms and the rest of it; craft matters. But are you nurturing your creative life with the same neurotic passion? When is the last time you looked outside the photography world for your inspiration?

So-called professionals are strangely guilty of letting this slide. There are times, when things get busy, that it feels like a luxury we don’t have time for. I’d encourage you to look at it the way you’d look at a chef who’s too busy cooking that he doesn’t take time to refill the pantry and fridge. At some point you’re going to be completely out of resources and scraping the bottom of the barrel for creative assets is not giving our clients – our ourselves – our best. It’s the best way to begin a downward spiral. It’s create and share without the sustain.

What are you doing regularly to re-fill your creative stocks? Are you out shooting with your Holga? Sketching? Going to the opera or ballet, teaching your children how to create photographs? Reading a book on creativity? If Chase’s paradigm is right, that to succeed as creatives in a circle of create – share – sustain, then it is refilling our creative stocks and nurturing our inner lives that keeps this whole thing moving, it’s part of the effort to sustain, and without it we stagnate and produce work that we’ve already done.

Chase has posted the talk to which I refered, in video format on his blog. You can find that video HERE.