How many take "Creativity Breaks?"

Thanks, Mike. I've been given excellent advice and I'm going to digest it carefully. Thank you all for taking the time and your willingness to help.

Rachel Foster said:

Alain, it's easier to impress others than to impress me. That is part of my problem.

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This is a problem all photographers have. It is good that you can acknowledge it. Most cannot. However, it is an important step.

Only when you stop being concerned with impressing others can you start to work towards acquiring a personal style. Until then you are not being yourself hence cannot create work that is about you. The work instead is about what you think the audience wants to see.

I think I get it, Alain. And I think I'm far enough along now to do that. Thanks!

Alain Briot said:

This is a problem all photographers have. It is good that you can acknowledge it. Most cannot. However, it is an important step.

Only when you stop being concerned with impressing others can you start to work towards acquiring a personal style. Until then you are not being yourself hence cannot create work that is about you. The work instead is about what you think the audience wants to see.

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Rachel,

I agree with Alain that working to one's own values can be a route not only to personal satisfaction, but also to success in having one's pictures actually selected by others for themselves. Folk want to see some expression from an individual human with a unique perspective. That gives a satisfactory jolt and a new experience. No one wants over-bleached white bread! Even a perfect sunset will go unnoticed because it's a perfect sunset the like of which they have seen too many times already!

Let me add to what Alian has said. My understanding from reading Alain's books and meeting him is that he'd concerned with more than photographing what's there, what anyone might record and then show. It's his vision which must include not just what one might see. He also aims to include in his final delivered work the ambience, noise of wind past rocks, the scents or the historical presence of people who painted rocks eons ago and the like. What you see then could only come from his hand. This may not be universal but I so think one can learn from this.

I myself have been so surprised to find that the work I did that I thought folk "wanted" to see was not often selected for projects! Instead, time and again, the pictures I did in the same shoot just for myself, (which were more edgy), somehow resonated more and were chosen for publication! Now, I no longer worry about my work being liked. I do still think a great deal about how to better express my ideas. That I find to be a constant personal challenge where the goal posts seem to move.

Rachel, you are prone to attacking yourself personally when your work does not meet your expectations. Well we all have to destroy a lot of our babies! When you see a series brilliant works, you are just not seeing the entire set of pictures that were made, but likely a tiny fraction selected to work together. You look at your own output and think you need a break. Well have fun, but don't put down your camera, just change your subjects and don't be so serious! Be flippant and enjoy your family and then back to work again.

I too do believe and need self-critique. Mostly I do it, literally at arms length, with a crayon drawing on a B&W copy of my pictures. If one does it that way, one can escape a downward spiral of self-pity and corrosive examination that's damaging to one's own feeling of worth as a photographer. I sometimes even say to my pictures, "Don't take it personally, but here, this is not right!" and scribble all sorts of big complaints. I then feel powerful and in charge, instead of dejected! Marking up a picture, for me at least, allows one to attack one's work without so severely undermining oneself. For sure it's cheating, but I feel that the picture is itself a kind of "living thing" and it has to bear some of the responsibility, LOL! This lying and dishonest attitude might possibly work for you too. It has a further advantage. At the end one's vicious attack on that failed picture, one at least has a design and renewed motivation to attack the project again and do better.

Asher

Thank you, Asher and Alain; thanks to everyone really. I think I need to "shoot for fun" for a short time. I need to stop trying so hard. I'm going to intentionally shoot some snapshots for a while and finish writing my book.

Most of my best stuff came the first six months after I first picked up a camera. THAT is what is frustrating me.

Rachel,

A couple more thoughts - and I spend enough time myself in the place you're finding yourself - which might relate. Self-criticism sometimes in part might be a self-protection mechanism, so that's an element to watch out for.

The other comes out of your last statement about the first six months after picking up the camera, which might be more to the point. Maybe it's about discovery, or the sense of discovery, that came when first seriously photographing? I sometimes looks back at stuff I did years ago and immediately am critical of my technique, which has hopefully improved over time, but once in awhile there's something in a shot that appeals to me and puzzles me at the same time. Basically, where was my brain/mood when I took that? I liked it then. I like it now. I keep looking for it and try to reduce the noise in my brain (that constant monologue).

At the moment I'm not sure how to elaborate on this, but it's something I find myself mulling over a lot when I'm out in the woods, or sitting up on a bluff waiting for the false dawn before sunrise. Sometimes it comes with the sunrise. Sometimes not...

Mike

__________
Mike Bailey

http://BlueRockPhotography.com

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Blue-R...y/100527420759

I'm trying to figure that one out, too, Mike. I think it's important but I'm stuck.

I've been carefully thinking about all of this and I've drawn up a "battle plan," as it were. Borrowing from Jim Collum's Pic-A-Day exercises, I'm going to do something similar. I'm going to do about four exercises, I think. For a fortnight I'll come up with 7-14 images selected from a given theme. The themes I'm going to choose from include but are not limited the following.

Food
Things in my handbag
Things in my home office
Toys
House cleaning tools and equipment
Makeup
Steps/stairs
Paper
Clothing
Related to photography
Related to dance

Now, what to choose first?

CHoose what interests you the most. Don't I recall your interest in theater?

I've shot that a lot, yes. The problem is that I have to have someone let me into the theatre and I often shoot late at night after the children are in bed.

I'm thinking I want to go back to still life and shoot things that are hard to shoot. I may not produce anything "good," but I'm hoping it will force me to think differently in the attempt.

What do you think?

Rachel Foster said:

I've shot that a lot, yes. The problem is that I have to have someone let me into the theatre and I often shoot late at night after the children are in bed.

I'm thinking I want to go back to still life and shoot things that are hard to shoot. I may not produce anything "good," but I'm hoping it will force me to think differently in the attempt.

What do you think?

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I think you need to be interested in what you shoot - you must shoot your subject because of your engagement with it (I do not say love or liking) and not simply for the sake of photography.

Of course, there are undoubtedly different ways.

Something I've observed in (amateur) photography is a common need to try and 'do what the pros do' and to earn money from it. But fundamentally (and with no sense of any defamation or offence) that is a commercial business and the job is to deliver what the client wants - shooting weddings is not really about your artistic vision. You do not need to be constrained by this, but have the great freedom to explore what interests you.

Enjoy!

Mike

Ah, but Mike, therein lies the secret! I'm interested in and motivated by the challenge! THAT is what grabs me and keeps me enthralled. The idea of taking something terribly ordinary and making it look different or interesting..wow!