Fueling Creativity
My fingers have been itching to start flying through writing this article but honestly, they’ve been resting on the keyboard for what seems way too long due to the fire hydrant of information I want to convey. So hopefully my brain and fingers will start to connect here in a second. Here it goes!
How do you fuel creativity?
Here’s my breakdown.
I find that fueling creativity happens when I’m chasing inspiration. When I’ve set a goal to shoot a certain style of image, maybe looking forward to using a particular light modifier, or when I’m sifting through the work of my peers. My friend Stephen would say, “Lingering in it.”
Creativity’s love language is time spent.
In this lingering phase, I’m banking information away OR front-loading my subconscious mind to use at a later date, but why is this important?
sub·con·scious
/səbˈkänSHəs/
adjective
of or concerning the part of the mind of which one is not fully aware but which influences one's actions and feelings.
Ok great. Thanks for that Corey… Wait.
We put so much information in our subconscious mind that it only needs a small spark to ignite a moment of inspiration and start the process of pulling it forward into our conscious minds.
You follow? In other words, you can’t pull out what you haven’t put in.
I’m out on a shoot and feeling quite dry, mainly because I wasn’t into what I was shooting, and out of the blue, a cat runs across the street and inspiration strikes! That silly cat reminded me of the story behind this image.
Joe McNally was shooting portraits of this fella in Europe. He’d been on an assignment for a few days and the time had come for the shoot to wrap, but Joe felt like he hadn’t “got the shot.” On leaving the old man was seeing him off and suddenly his mousing cat jumps on his shoulder. Luckily smart Joe knew better than to EVER put his camera away. Captured this image and the magazine ran it.
The CAT by way of this image inspired me to…
Remain patient.
Find comfort in the lingering.
Allow shots to take shape.
Give creativity space to operate.
NEVER put your camera away.
I felt a newfound desire, a breath of fresh air, maybe a new added perspective or approach to the problem I was faced with.
Be Creative Now.
I’ve been faced with this SO many times. I’m in a client meeting and all eyes are looking at me to perform. We need 5 unique ideas for this right now, GO!
What are your ideas?
If you’re prepared this is an amazing opportunity! You’ve been given a golden ticket to carry out one of your crazy ideas and someone is wanting to pay you to do it, or you can get pulled into something far less inspiring or even worse fired from the project.
Story time! I’m sitting across from a Creative Director in an exploration meeting. That’s just a fancy way of saying they don’t know what they wanna do yet OR they’re unsure if you’re the right person for the project. He asks me this very same question, “What are your ideas?" and without hesitation, I go into an excited brain dump over what we can do and how we’d do it because
I had/have such a deep well of the techniques, styles I want to shoot in, and they’re just looking for an opportunity such as these to come along.
The Creative Director says to me, “Well, this guy is bidding much less for the job can you meet his price?” Ah, come on! ha!
I end up getting the project for two reasons. No, I didn’t meet anyone else’s price. It was my idea and concepts that won him over! The Creative Director told me that he felt I was metaphorically, and as this was a product shoot; physically, bringing more to the table. That, to him, justified the higher cost than the other person. Had I froze when asked the question what my ideas were, had any hesitation, or frankly agreed to cut my price I wouldn't have gotten that job.
The takeaway here is, front-loading ideas, fueling creativity, and DO NOT CUT RATE.
Just Play
Bert Monroy is an illustrator and his work is amazing. He always says, make sure you PLAY. It’s that easy.
There’s no better way to fuel creativity than to PLAY.
Exercise your imagination or it becomes weak.
Here’s an action step for those looking to fuel creativity. If you don’t have a personal project going right now that excites you and occupies your thoughts in times of lingering. I’d encourage you to find some! The trickle-down effect of remembering how much you love photography improves every area of doing it as a job. Trust me.
I love to search for topics on Pinterest like these; Studio lighting, composites, studio setups, product photography, low key photography. The more time you spend wandering down rabbit holes is priceless, BUT it doesn’t stop there. There’s a DOING factor that has to happen to complete the process. Doing is the period at the end of a sentence. You have an opportunity to get so fat with content and never execute an idea. YOU HAVE TO SHOOT IN ORDER TO FINISH FUELING YOUR CREATIVITY. You want to stay a lean mean creative machine.
