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Week 20: Using boundaries to increase creativity


Take a moment to think how far you've come. You've learnt to shoot off auto, how to compose and how the light works.

You can give your brain a rest for the next 4 weeks. There is nothing approaching hard work in this module - this is all fun. There are plenty of new things to try, and one or two of them will open up the creative bits of your brain that have been sleeping for a while.

 
 

Creativity

Do you despair of ever having an original idea? Do you wish you could do something a bit different with your camera, a bit more personal, a bit more interesting? Well the good news is your brain is actually a seething bundle of ideas, and the only thing stopping them emerging into the daylight is you.

You will be sabotaging new ideas all the time:

- you might use up all your attention on things that inhibit the formation of new ideas (Facebook, TV, reading, working out how to get 3 children to 4 different places within the space of 30 minutes)

- you might shut ideas down before they're even born (by telling yourself you'll never have a good idea, that all the good ideas have been done, that you are just ordinary, that you don't have time, that you're not creative)

- you might let ideas pop out, but then slam them back without giving them time to breathe (by pointing out all the practical problems, by worrying about the dials and camera controls)

- you might not even dare to think of a new idea for fear of What People Will Say ("Who does she think she is, trying to be arty when she's never picked up a paintbrush in her life?")

How to be creative

I spent 2 years doing a masters degree in online education, and my dissertation was on whether you can teach (and therefore learn) creativity. And the answer is yes, it can be taught.

I can show you many techniques in the next few weeks that will help you unlock your creativity, but I need a couple of things from you first.

1. You need to be willing to make mistakes. I know you hear this a lot online, but I mean it. You have to be ready to press the shutter and really not care what the photo is like. Take a moment to think about that. You don't have to share it, but you have to look at it without criticising yourself. You may criticise the photo, but you may NOT criticise the photographer.

2. You need to stop calling your mistakes, 'mistakes'. That implies they are wrong. How can that be, when you are on a journey, and they are essential steps along the way? The quickest way to take a photo you are proud of is actually to take 100 that you are not proud of - not to read 3 books, a monthly magazine and all my emails about how to take the photo you want to be proud of. So the photos you are not proud of are just that. In fact you can be proud of them, because they are freeing your mind and getting you where you want to be.

 

THIS WEEK'S PROJECT: Setting limits to release creativity

Starting a piece of writing with a blank piece of paper, food shopping with no meal plan, garden design with no brief: all recipes for a long, tortuous, wasteful process to a single final (probably dissapointing) outcome.

It's the same when you're about to take a photograph.

If you have a day set aside, but no goal, no definite idea of what you want to achieve, then more likely than not you'll try a bit of this, a bit of that, and finish up generally dissatisfied with everything.

But if you impose some artificial limits, your brain will respond like magic. Give the writer a list of objects they need to include, or a story arc, or an opening sentence, and they'll be off. Tell me I need 3 meals to be slow cooked, 2 packed lunches and a roast, and I'll be finished shopping in 20 minutes. And let the garden designer know you have acid soil, you need a cutting garden and a wild flower area, and they've got somewhere to start.

As for the writer, the chef, the gardener, so for you. I'm going to give you a few artificial constraints to try this week. You can try one or all of them. No cheating. You will run out of ideas at some point but you must keep going, keep taking photos, even though they are not going to be your best work. The process of finding images will train the neurons in your brain that this is what you want it to do when you next start looking for images, and so then next time it will be easier. (I have a psychology degree. This is true, I'm not making it up.)

Pick one of these:

1. A time restriction: you must take a photograph every 5 minutes for an hour. Set an alarm, and you can spend no longer than 3 seconds looking for the image.

2. A subject restriction: pick one thing (a chair, a toy, a vegetable, not a person) and take 20 completely different portraits of it.

3. A kit restriction: what's the piece of kit you use least? Take it out and create 20 photos with it.


So what about the camera controls?

It's up to you how you want to do this section of the course. If you are constantly trying to remember apertures, or change shutter speeds, it will inhibit your creative brain. But you are also on a journey to learn to use your camera, so you might not want to completely forget everything you've learnt so far.

By all means, use your phone for these exercises, or stick your camera on Program, and have some fun. You can't be creative if you are worried.

But if you're up for it, you can take 5 or 10 minutes before the exercise to practise one (only one) manual control, and then use that one as you work through the exercise. For example, if you want to incorporate shallow depth of field, do some test shots with your camera on a large aperture first. Make sure you have enough light, and that all the other controls are working OK. Then leave your camera on that setting and forget it. Don't be tempted to change it during the exercise.

(If you have the first workbook, there are more ideas to try in Chapter 15.)

Share your images in the Facebook group, in the 25 January homework thread.


Next week we look at one of the most important skills any photographer needs to master - the ability to selectively focus their attention. This skill will open up many, many photography opportunities for you.

Emma

In case you missed it...

 
 
 
 
 
Emma Davies Photography, Marigold, East Bracklesham Drive, Bracklesham Bay, Chichester, PO20 8JW, United Kingdom

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