Tag: fear

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Sustainability

Watching paint run - creatively

Sustainability is a common buzz word these days. It is applied to everything. Every company and product claims it. For this, I’m going to redefine sustainability from an artistic point of view.

Creative sustainability

As artists, we live on our creativity. Do you worry that the well may dry up? What if your creativity goes away?

If we produce hard, do we use it up? Or is the engine somehow fed by using more? Is creativity a “sustainable” resource or does it get used up?

Since this is the core of what we do as artists, it is natural to worry about it. Probably all of us at some point have concerns that we may use it up. What would we do then?

So, an ongoing concern for many of us is, should we ration and conserve our creativity so we don’t use it up? Is it even possible to conserve it?

Sustainable creativity

I don’t believe creativity actually gets used up. It is like a good well that always seems to be full when we need it. If anything, creativity thrives on being challenged and used. It seems like the more we call on it, the more there is.

But is it sustainable? I think so, but we can be our own worst enemies. If we keep doing the same stuff over and over we get less creative. When we try to stay in a safe rut, there is less need to exercise creative. We’ve done it all. Many times. It is a major challenge to apply new creativity to repeating the same things.

Unless we are following the lead of where our creativity wants to take us, we risk getting stale. When that happens, we seriously fear we are not creative any more. And we are right.

That doesn’t mean our creativity is gone. But if we do not give it free rein to take us in new directions, it stops challenging us. For all practical purposes, our creativity is them used up.

Creativity is like a good friend. It will be there for us, but we have a responsibility to nurture the relationship. If we ignore it, if we do not make time for it, it will eventually give up on us.

Burnout

Everyone goes through cycles. Creativity, and everything else in life, can ebb and flow. That is natural. But burnout is an extreme. It is a depressed state where it can seem impossible to ever again do the quality of work we want to do. It can persist for months or years if we let it.

I know. I have been there. There was a time in my career when I worked long hours for years in a job that was not fulfilling. It caught up to me. I crashed. I pulled back, working less hours and not being as satisfied with the quality of my work. Eventually, by changing position and increasing the creativity of my role, I became productive and happy in my job again. It was probably a 3 year process.

In burnout, it seems evident that creativity must be unsustainable. That’s not true, though. It is not creativity that lets us down, it is the other parts of our context. It is important to manage our lives and environment if we want to stay creative.

Creative stimulus

Like an athlete trains constantly, we must exercise our creativity to stay on top of our game. Everyone’s needs are different, so it is impossible to lay out a plan for you to follow to do it. You have to figure that out for yourself.

I can provide some creative stimulants I have seen and used. Consider them. Try the ones that seem to fit you. Develop your own methods.

I will just bullet point some of them. Each could be a topic on it’s own.

Read. And not just the same old stuff. Read new things. Read things by people you disagree with. And also read some light stuff just for fun.

Study something new. Don’t plan to get a PhD in it. Just learn something about it. If you like it, go deeper. If not, try something else.

Write

Go back and review your old work. Put together a new portfolio.

Go to a museum.

Travel to a new place that is NOT a major iconic photo location.

Put blocks of time in your calendar to do nothing. Turn off your phone. Let your mind wander. Doodle. Look around. Intentionally be unproductive.

Spend time with friends, just living life.

Take your significant other out for a nice and unexpected meal.

Find things that make you happy, but that are not just entertainment. Try to do more of them.

Take walks, with and without your camera.

Just do it

The theme here is to fill your mind with new information. This connects in strange and unexpected ways, leading to who knows what. And to give yourself space and time to just think, ponder, consider, unwind. The more pressure we put ourselves under, the more it shuts down creativity.

And like the inspired Nike tag line, “just do it”. Get out and work. Take pictures, Don’t worry so much about the results. Going through the motions is comforting and leads to results. Eventually. Creativity is not just inspiration, it is a process.

Relax and try to de-clutter your head. Follow your instincts.

Is creativity sustainable? I would say definitely. It is one of the most important traits we have as artists. We can consciously take actions to keep our creativity healthy and flowing. But we have to listen to ourselves and recognize what our needs are.

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It’s OK to be Uncomfortable

Nice landscape. Taken in rest area

I recently read an article from a photographer who admitted he sometimes doesn’t stop to take a picture he wanted because he was afraid of what people would think. I understand that. I have been there many times. But I have come to the conclusion that it’s OK to be uncomfortable.

What will people think?

You’ve probably been here. I know I have. You are driving down a crowded road and you see a scene you want to photograph. But we decide not to pull off and get out the equipment because we would look foolish standing there beside the road taking a picture. All those people going by would think we’re weird.

The reality I have learned, though, is that no one thinks about you as much as you do. That is a fact. We overestimate our importance. We will be more free and inventive if we stop worrying about what they may think.

People go about their dreary lives almost totally focused on themselves and their needs. If they do momentarily notice you, even if they criticize you, you do not know what they are really thinking. Most often, they are responding to something in themselves. Because they do not really care about you.

I love this quote from Susan Sontag: I envy paranoids; they actually feel people are paying attention to them.

And from Olin Miller: You probably wouldn’t worry about what people think of you if you could know how seldom they do!

If that random person driving by thinks you are doing something foolish, so what? How did that affect you? Did you feel it? Did it hurt? No. You do not know what they are thinking and besides, you are doing your art, not theirs.

The anxiety we feel is internally generated.

Attract attention

I understand. I’m very introverted and I am uncomfortable attracting attention. An interesting dynamic because of where I live is that I do attract unwanted attention sometimes.

In my area there is a lot of wildlife, such as elk, deer, moose, bear, mountain lion, bighorn sheep, pronghorn, etc. I guess I am missing the right genes, but I have little interest in them, other than to observe them. I almost never take wildlife pictures. But if I am setting up to take a picture beside a road, it is not unusual for people to pull off and eagerly ask me what I see. They seem so disappointed when I point to a tree. It’s actually kind of funny.

And for the occasional street photography I do, I am one of those people who wants to be totally anonymous, unseen. It is uncomfortable when someone “catches” me taking their picture.

They won’t like me

So what do I do about this fear that people will think badly about me when I’m out shooting? The right answer is, ignore them. Easier said than done, but that is true of much of life.

I have learned to try to put them out of my mind completely and get in the zone focusing on setting up the shot I want. Generally this works. Replace the negative concern of fear with the positive action of taking a picture.

But even if it doesn’t work, more and more I come to the realization that I don’t care what they think. I am not trying to get them to like me or post a Facebook note about how much they admire that photographer they just passed. I don’t care.

The results I get in these situations validates and justifies my callous “don’t care” attitude toward them.

What are they going to do to you

Let’s say some of the passing people give you enough attention to say to themselves “that’s dumb”. So what? What happened? Did you feel it? Did they throw a rotten tomato at you? Did they stop to get your name and take a picture of you to post on Facebook to shame you?

Of course not. Absolutely nothing happened. They went on down the road and immediately forgot about you. If they were stopped 20 miles later and asked, they probably wouldn’t remember someone standing beside the road taking a picture.

This is the quandary: we fear what people might think, but the reality is they don’t bother to think about us. And even if they did, it has no effect on us.

Do what you need to do

If you do what other people do, you get the results that other people get. – Bill Miller

We are artists. We see things differently. That means we do things differently. Other people cannot know what our vision is at any moment unless we tell them or show them. Showing them is typically what we do.

So do what you need to do to make your art. Do not be concerned about what anyone may think about you. First, they probably don’t. Second, it doesn’t matter. You have art to do.

If you were embarrassed taking the picture feel doubly joyful when you see the great result. You can say to those people passing by who you imagined felt you were silly, “see what you missed”!

Get over it

I hope I have encouraged you to forget about your fear of people’s opinion and go for your art. Art is action. It is only an idea unless we create something.

Act while you feel fear rather than waiting until you feel unafraid. – David Richo, in How to be an Adult

How sad it is to think about what could have been a great image, except we were too embarrassed to stop and take it. I have done it both ways. I have passed by and regretted it and I have overcome my fear and stopped and usually been happy I did.

I am old and calloused enough to believe now that I shouldn’t be overly concerned about what I think other people may be thinking. It’s OK to be uncomfortable. If being uncomfortable is a price for making our art, that is what we have to do.

Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear – not absence of fear. – Anon

To you who have never been intimidated by other people’s opinions, congratulations! You have a talent most of us do not have. Use it well. Don’t be an ass.

Today’s image

Do you like this image of the vast Utah plains? I do. It is not a result of trekking hours across the barren desert, watching for rattlesnakes. I took it in a rest stop on I-70, right next to the restrooms. It felt uncomfortable at the time, but I loved the scene and had to take it. At this point, I don’t recall the discomfort. But I still like the image.

When you see something you like, stop and take it, unless it is dangerous or you have higher priorities at the moment, like a critical appointment. There are some things more important than our art. Not many, but don’t ignore them.

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If We’re Not Moving Forward…

Rise Against, representing the daily struggle

We can get trapped in our own mind. Fear can pen us in. We must constantly remind ourselves of what happens if we’re not moving forward.

Can’t stand still

The actual quote, attributed to Sam Waterson, is “If you’re not moving forward, you’re falling back.” There is a lot of truth in that. As much as we sometimes would like to lock things down, we can’t. Time moves on. We move on. Relationships change. People grow apart or together. Our knowledge and tastes and perceptions change.

Have you ever gone back and looked at some of your art or writing from a few years ago? It can be depressing. Our first reaction is probably that our work was terrible back then. But no, that is not necessarily true. That was the best work we could do at the time. We are seeing what we were at that moment in the past. But we have moved on now and are in a different place. And it’s an ongoing process.

Fear

Some of us get trapped in the past by fear. We did some work we thought was very good. Maybe we received some recognition for it. Perhaps we even were so unfortunate as to become famous. Now we are afraid to move away from what we became recognized for in the past, even though we are feeling a pull in a different direction.

Past work becomes an anchor on our creativity unless we consciously cut it loose. But it is all to easy to fear that we have peaked and will never be able to do any more work as good.

Well, maybe that is true. Maybe the next body of work we do will be inferior. We won’t know until we do it. When we strike out in a new direction it is quite natural to grope around hesitantly for a while until we find our footing. The first versions of new work could be fairly bad. But if it is where we are being pulled, we will find what we are looking for.

Growth

We are growing creatures. Life constantly gives us new stimulus, new knowledge, new ideas. We meet people and have good discussions. We learn new things and connect ideas and resolve old questions and ask new ones.

At least, we are intended to do that. Some people stay in their rut, doing the same thing over and over without advancing. It’s like the question do you have 10 years of experience or 1 year of experience repeated 10 times? When put like that it seems obvious there is a big difference. But a rut is safe and comfortable. There is no risk. No one criticizes us. But where there is no risk, there is no change, no growth, no reward.

As artists, we should be comfortable learning and changing. Experimenting with new ideas and ways of looking at our art and the world. Having confidence that our best work is yet to come.

It really is true that there are only 2 paths. If we stop growing, we start dying. When we find ourselves in the inevitable rut, they can be hard to get out of. You have to very deliberately and carefully steer out. Let the wheels grab the sides and climb out slowly. Your car will complain, but change always causes criticism. Hopefully, you are not in too deep.

We are different every day

We are not the same person today that we were yesterday. Like the expression that we can never step in the same river twice. Of course, that does not mean we are jerked around in some type of schizophrenic fugue. We don’t bounce randomly to wildly inconsistent states. At lease, I hope you don’t.

Who we are, our values and beliefs, stays relatively constant. We build on that base and develop as a person. Growth is usually incremental. Hopefully becoming a better person as we progress. Our art may seem to jump more as we embrace new expressions of what we are feeling. Like Picasso going through a blue period or an African period or a cubism period. He never changed who he was, he just responded in different ways at different phases of his life.

Our art changing as we grow is natural and healthy. It is much easier said than done, but we should not fear letting go of what we have done in the past, even if we are well known for it. We should trust that we are growing as an artist and being led to new and better work.

It is exciting to look forward to what is to come and what we have yet to create.

What would be of life if we didn’t have the courage of doing something new?

Vincent van Gogh

Today’s image

I chose this to represent the daily battle we all face. The internal struggle to rise above conformity and create what we have inside us. Don’t settle. Don’t give in.

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What Would You Make?

Break all the rules: not sharp, subject centered, subject indistinct, no leading lines, etc.

As creatives, we make things. But are we constrained by sets of rules and conventions? What would you make if those rules weren’t there?

We’re makers

Artists are makers. Maybe that is obvious. We have to be able to realize what we visualize.

It doesn’t do any good to say “I wish you could see what I’m thinking about doing.” It is not real until we do it. But sometimes we are held back by rules that seem to prevent us from doing what we want to do. Sometimes those “rules” are the voice in our head that is trying to keep us out of trouble, since trying something new carries the risk or failure or rejection. That protective voice can’t evaluate the upside of what we do, just the potential downside of loss or embarrassment. That fear can be as debilitating as hard rules someone imposes on us.

Whether it is our inner voice or the things we have been taught, when they prevent us from making what we feel we should, they are in the way.

Follow the rules

Many people seem eager to put rules on us. There is the famous rule of thirds. Then other rules of composition. You must have a foreground, middle ground, and background to have a balanced image. Don’t put the subject in the middle. Watch the edges. You can’t have any clutter or distraction there.

If you make it past all those, there are rules about what a photograph can or can’t be. Have a well defined subject that is in sharp focus. Never shoot in the 4 hours each side of noon because the light is too harsh. Expose (the histogram) to the right, but do not blow out highlights. Always use a tripod. There are many more. You know the routine.

Sometimes it seems impossible just to make an image. It all gets too complicated.

Whose rules?

But as I often ask, where did those rules come from and are they really “rules”?

There is no standards body that certifies artists. No one needs to grant you permission to practice your art, even if you went to art school and they thought they had the right to do that. No one can come and yank your image from the gallery wall because you broke a rule.

Given that, why do we act as if we are bound by rules or conventions? Is it to fit it? To be part of a group? Because we are insecure about our style or ability?

Maybe our favorite artist only does very realistic and dark black & white work, so that is the constraint we put on ourselves. We submitted work for an exhibit and it was rejected. Everything selected was highly abstract, so we think that is what we must do. Our local camera club disallows landscape images that show any sign of man, so that must be a rule for landscapes.

Don’t apply them indiscriminately

All the “rules” may well have been created for good reasons. But they should not be applied indiscriminately. There is a story of the mother teaching her daughter to cook. The mother cuts off the end of a roast before putting it in a pan and cooking it. The daughter asks why she did that. She says she doesn’t know, but that’s what her mother taught her to do. Sometime later the little girl asks her grandmother why she cut off the end off roasts. The grandmother told her it was because when she was young her pan was too short.

The story is probably fake, but it’s point is valid. Even if rules were created for good reason, they may not apply to you in the situation. Always evaluate the reason realistically.

Be yourself and do your own art. Who gets to decide if the work pleases you? Isn’t it only you?

What would you make if there were no rules?

Imagine there were no rules imposed on you. What would you do in that case? What would you create that is different from what you are doing now?

Would you be bold to create fresh new art that may bend genres and go in new directions? Then do it! You do not have to be bound by anybody else’s rules. Set your own values and constraints. That is how creativity happens.

Now, I am not advocating total anarchy. There is enough of that posing as art. It does not have to be disturbing or unrecognizable to be creative. Just make it your own vision.

Learn the history of image making. Study what has been done by masters over time. The things that have been recognized as leading to “good” art. Knowing what has been done will not pollute you.

What will pollute you is taking those things as rules that you must follow. Learn the rules then creatively break them. That is the way to push the boundaries to new limits. Limits you discover and exploit. Be free to take your art in whatever direction feels best to you.

No rules.

Credit

I get ideas in a lot of unlikely places. It fascinates me that I got the idea for this article from an interview I heard with Carrie Underwood, the Country singer. A lot of her songs bend and even blur the limits of her genre. She was describing one project she was working on and being frustrated in not being able to come up with the effect she wanted, The patterns and constraints of what makes a typical country song seemed to box her in. Then she asked herself “what would I make if I didn’t have rules?”. After that she felt more free to relax the constraints and take ideas from rock or other sources that she liked. Now she could create her own preferred style.

We can do it, too. What would you make if you didn’t have rules?

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How To Be Creative

Keeping Knowledge locked away

Is creativity a talent only certain people have? Is it a process to be learned? Did you ever wonder about how to be creative?

The Muse

People often speak of being visited by the Muse. Or more likely, not being visited recently. The muse seems to be this mysterious, invisible force that comes on us at times and endows us with tremendous creative force. For a while. Until she decides to leave. The muses are almost always described as female.

I can’t deny that sometimes I seem to be filled with creative energy and sometimes I can’t come up with a single good idea. Is that because of muses? I don’t want to jinx myself, but I don’t think so. It is too easy to blame external things. There is an ebb and flow to everything in life. I think creativity is part of that. It is unreasonable to expect to be on a creative high all the time. It would be nice, but we have to recharge sometimes, too. If it was constant, we would appreciate it less.

A talent

OK, so is creativity a talent a few have naturally and most of us don’t? It seems like that sometimes. Have you ever met someone, maybe an artist, maybe someone in your work life who seems to exude a flow of creativity? Someone who seems to get more done than anyone else?

I have. Several times. It can be humbling. It can make you want to change careers because you seem so inferior.

Talent is a real thing. Back in my life as a software developer I did some investigation into this and found evidence that there can be a 20 to 1 difference in productivity between developers. That seems to imply that some have a natural talent for doing the work. But, don’t let this slip by, they evaluated a 20 to 1 difference in productivity. That is not necessarily creativity. Creativity is much harder to measure.

Here is a truth of life that is important to remember: just because something is easier for someone than for you does not mean their work is better. So while there are differences in talent, that does not exclude anyone.

A process

On the other hand, we can demonstrate that creativity is a process. We have to do it, not sit around waiting to be inspired. A couple of quotes from my article I reference above:

“Inspiration is for amateurs. Us professionals just go to work in the morning.” – Chuck Close

“Hard work will outperform talent any day of the week.” – Joel Grimes

One thing we seldom talk about as an element of creativity is domain skill. That is, to be creative you first need to be good at what you are doing. Whether it is photography or writing or software development, you have to be skilled in your domain to be able to rise above the average.

So a good part of our process is to always be working to improve our skills. When “the muse is gone” and we do not feel inspired, at least be working on our craft. I have often seen in my own life that sometimes just focusing on a technical skill can lead to new thoughts and ideas for new work.

Am I creative?

Ah, the question that haunts most “creatives”. We often doubt ourselves. After all, what we think and do is obvious to us. So it must be obvious to everyone else. Right? Probably not.

Almost everyone is creative is some areas. But I have never met someone who has all their faculties who does not have the ability to create at some level.

But we set a very high standard for ourselves, don’t we? We expect massive, glowing creativity. World changing things. Really? Not many things change the world to any measurable extent. Our insecurity about our creativity is right up there with our imposter syndrome fears.

Try this experiment. Look at a lot of the published work by other artists is your field. There will be some that blow you away. That really impress you and make you feel inferior. But think about 2 things. First, remind yourself that you are only seeing their best of the best. You never see the 99% of the failures. Are you comparing your failures to their best?

Second think about what you consider the fails among that work. Will there be a significant part of it where you will say “Really? I throw away stuff like that.”? This should convince you that you can be just as creative as most of them.

Ebb and flow

Human nature is such that we don’t just go through life at an even level. There are peaks and valleys, ebb and flow. Sometimes we are up and sometimes we are down. Don’t get disappointed when your creativity follows this pattern.

But one of my points above is, get to work. Do something. Don’t sit around feeling sorry for yourself and waiting for the muse to come back. Work. Maintain a discipline of doing things anyway. You may throw away most of what you do in this phase, but you can learn and improve your skills and it can be effective at getting you out of the valley more quickly.

One of the self help gurus I for some reason get stuff from recently said “Confidence is a byproduct of action”. I happen to agree with this. And I would add creativity is, too.

Little C or Big C

Notice that I have never defined what creativity is. This is intentional. Don’t most of us say “poor me, I’m not creative” without defining what we mean.

One conventional definition from Psychology research is that creativity is “the production of ideas or outcomes that are both novel and appropriate to some goal” (COMPONENTIAL THEORY OF CREATIVITY, Teresa Amabile, Harvard Business School). The clause about goals is there because the motivation of the research was the corporate environment. Talking solely about art, I would remove that and concentrate on the novelty of a work product.

So, what is novelty and how novel does it have to be to be considered “creative”? Amabile and others say that almost everyone has some degree of creativity. It is expressed in different ways and with different impact.

She uses an example of what she terms little C creativity vs big C creativity. The dentist who came up with the idea of letting kids wear fun sunglasses during exams to protect their eyes from the bright lights is what she calls little C. It is creative but not hugely novel. At the other extreme Schawlow expressed the principles on which all lasers are based. He won a Nobel Prize for that. Definitely big C.

So maybe we ought to give ourselves a little more freedom. Creativity does not have to be Nobel Prize winning. A novel composition or idea in our images is genuinely creative if you have never seen it before.

Novelty for its own sake

So if creativity revolves around the concept of novelty, how novel and new does something have to be? I think many artists are too caught up in this and try to do novel things regardless of their artfulness. Just browse through most contemporary art galleries or The Hand Magazine.

The definition of creative above brings together novel and appropriate. Maybe doing something solely because no one else has ever done it is not good enough. Don’t forget that the idea is to make art while we are doing it.

Creativity

So maybe we shouldn’t be expecting lightning flashes of brilliance in our daily work. Maybe we should work our craft and perfect our skills to make sure we are about as good as anyone else. Then “connect the dots” as Steve Jobs used to say. If we can be open and receptive to thinking in new ways, we can look for opportunities to apply novelty as an edge to differentiate our self from the pack. Then the novelty is actually a creative enhancement to our work, not just something novel.

Today’s image

I seldom try to create “message” images. When I came across this scene, though, it was too powerful to pass up. It connected several dots with me. I think I have made a creative image that can express a strong idea. Maybe more than one. What do you think?