Creativity for Photographers

Notes on
DAVID DUCHEMIN
About the images in this book.

These were all shot, for better or worse, to

explore my process, take risks, and play. They
are not my best work but they represent some
of the most enjoyment I’ve found in creating
photographs in a long time. They represent
my own search for the things I love about
my hometown, and an effort to go see things
afresh. They were shot on film with an older
Hasselblad C/M and an 80mm lens.

Scratches, dust, and all manner of imperfec-

tions have been left in.
 Introduction.
This is the second in what, for now, is a two volume series of thoughts and reflections on creativity
for photographers. Not creative photography, not even really ideas on how to make your photog-
raphy more creative, but thoughts about creativity itself. I think it’s important to approach creativ-
ity pragmatically, and there’s much to be said for nurturing creativity only as you think it pertains
to your craft, but that’s plowing a pretty small field. What you want as you till the ground of your
creative soul and mind, and plant seeds that’ll one day bear fruit, is to till the widest patch, and
sow the most seed possible. This isn’t stuff you can predict, and we often find the stuff we thought
would bring the most return is, in fact, the stuff that bears no fruit at all, while the far corners of our
creativity, in the spots we never imagined the seed to have fallen, are the corners where the unex-
pected, the inspired, grows. So this is, like Volume I, a collection of thoughts about creativity itself.

To extend the thin metaphor of agriculture, not everyone is going to grow the same thing on their
patch of ground. Not everyone, I suspect, even has the same size field with which to work. But
we are all creative, in some measure, and what is important is never how much fruit our creativity
bears compared to the next photographer, but what we make of the patch of ground we’ve been
given. Our choices are in how we prepare the soil, and what we decide to plant, both activities
that can dramatically improve our chances of growing anything at all. Sit around and wait for the
harvest and you’ll wait a long time if you haven’t done your part.

Till your soil. Pull the rocks. Turn the compost in. Sow the right seed at the right time. All these
things depend on you, apart from the sun and water and the elements that farmers hope and
gamble on. The creative life isn’t so unlike this. We’re dependant on outside elements, we wait for
perfect moments and the hand of inspiration; but our odds are better the more we labour to this
end. 10% inspiration, 90% perspiration, right?

If I stretch the metaphor further I’ll exceed the limits of my knowledge and the whole thing will
fall apart. I’m hoping there aren’t many farmers among my readers, and if you’re one of them I’m
asking for your indulgence and hope this analogy isn’t far off. I’m just saying we all need to do
the work, tend the fields and occasionally spread the manure. Sure, spend a day here and there
cleaning the combines and talking to the other farmers about your augers and stuff, but that’s just
talking about farming. It’s not actually farming. Farming is the stuff that makes your hands dirty.
Same with creativity. Don’t worry about the logo on your tractor or spend your time making excus-
es for the size of your field. Just get out there and sow the seeds.

2
4
Ask “What If...?”
Before returning to my first love, Photography, I spent 12 years in
a career as a comedian. And during that time there were very few
comments that drove me crazier than “Say something funny.” The
pressure to come up with something while not feeling like a trained
monkey who was doing what he was told was immense. I usually
resorted to a canned line or fumbled my way through some reply
that was distinctly un-funny. The equivalent for someone in the
more generic creative arts is, “Hey, come up with something cre-
ative.”

I don’t think I could even come up with a working definition of the

word “creative.” But here’s where I think I’ve settled in my thinking
about it: creativity is the ability to see things in a new way, a way
that combines existing things, viewpoints, elements, in a way that
hasn’t been done, or in a way that uniquely solves a problem. It is,
in short, the power of “What if…?”

“What if…?” has got me out of more jams and produced better
work for me than any other question. To come back to the notion
of someone telling you to “think creatively” about something, it’s
next to impossible. Tell me the same thing and I’m as stumped as I
was when people asked me to “say something funny.” But give me
the space to ask “what if…?” and I’m off to the races. It frees me to
begin thinking in new ways and following mental rabbit trails until
some new thing jumps out from behind a mental bush and yells
“Surprise!”

We all wrestle with it. Some of us get stuck because we don’t have
enough inputs feeding the “what if…?” Some of us censor ourselves
too much. Some of us are afraid of the answer to the question.
Whatever the block is, consider this your permission to tear it down.
The stakes are too high not to.
When’s the last time you did something wrong, shot with the wrong ap-
erture, the wrong shutter speed, the wrong light ratio? Been a while? Do
it! How long’s it been since you shot a portrait with the wrong lens? Sure,
we take risks when it seems the only choice we have left, but forcing
yourself to take those risks before you get to the end of your other good
ideas, that’s often where the gold is.

The heart of the creative spark is the childlike question, “Hey, what if
I…?” When you get stumped or blocked or just feel uninspired, it’s time
to start asking that question. Even if the best you can do is “Hey, what if I
shot with film instead of digitally today?” What if you shot with a lens you
never use or your Lensbaby instead of a “more serious” lens? What if…
leads to more moments of inspiration than any other question.

6
Know The Rules.
(Then Break Them.)
We begin with rules. They guide us. At one point they were prob-
ably less rigid and existed only as wisdom and principles before
they became rules. The so-called Rule of Thirds, for example. No
such thing. It’s merely a principle that got too big for its britches.
The principle is still there and the thing about principles is that
they’re really more comfortable with acting as guides that lead you
to something bigger. Rules don’t merely constrain you, they confine
you. But throwing them out without looking to the core of them and
finding what made it, at one point, so appealing to blindly follow
them, means you might be missing something valuable.

I think if you look at all the artists and creatives that we now hold
up as the great ones, you’ll see that all of them learned the rules of
their day, then broke some, or all, of them, and went on to create
exceptional work. We now look at that work, see the new principles
on which it was created (the principles that were discovered by
breaking the old rules), and enshrine them as new rules. What we
forget is that the iconoclasm, the anarchist that is in all real cre-
atives, is as important to the great work as the discovery of prin-
ciples. You have to learn your craft, but you have to take risks and
move in new directions. Failure to do so isn’t creativity. Creativity
isn’t in the straight line, it’s in the zig-zag.

Of course, breaking the rules merely for the sake of breaking them
isn’t usually considered self-expression by anyone other than bored
teenagers and sociopaths. Creativity is in colouring outside the
lines; destroying the colouring book altogether is just destruction.
And it’s not only the established rules I’m talking about, but our
own. We get fixed in our ways, we wind up in ruts and have our
 self-discovered rules and principles. If we want not to repeat our-
selves, but to grow or evolve as creatives, we need to find ways to
depart from these self-imposed rules as much as the ones handed
to us.

Consider this small act of photographic anarchy. Sit down and make
a list of the rules you learned in Photography 101 or from the first
books you read in photography. Make the list long. Put your favou-
rites in there: The best portrait lens is an 85mm lens, put your cam-
era on a tripod, have a clear subject, place the subject on the thirds
of the frame, etc. Now go willfully break them. Sure, the images are
likely to be little more than sketches and you won’t want to show
them to anyone, but the willful disobedience to these rules might
give you the courage to begin venturing further afield, to discover
things the rules now prevent you from seeing.

Learn the rules first, then develop a healthy suspicion of them.

Rules will give you safe photographs, but safe art isn’t usually what
our souls are clamouring to create.

“Out of clutter find simplicity. From discord find harmony. In the middle
of difficulty lies opportunity.”
~ Albert Einstein

8
 Collaborate.
Creativity can flourish in all kinds of contexts, and certainly within the con-
straints of working alone. And Picasso could paint Guernica without much
more than blacks and blues on a white canvas. But we all work differently,
and even the Spaniard drew inspiration from his colleagues. Collaboration is
powerful, from the inspiration we can draw from others, to working with oth-
ers to create something that is greater than the sum of our individual talents
or ideas, it can take us places we’d never be willing or able to go on our own.

Collaborating can bring several benefits.

Working with others, spending time with other creatives and rallying the
collective power of several muses, is a great way to get the juices flowing.
There’s great power in one creative person with a vision, but when the well
begins to dry up, there are few things that’ll fill it back up like working with
another.

Being with another creative, even someone in another discipline can help us
see our blind spots. Where a photographer might be looking at a problem in
one way, a painter will see it in another. Our tools are different, but the chal-
lenge of translating a 3 dimensional world into 2 dimensions is similar in both
cases and what the photographer takes for granted the painter might see
with new eyes. Don’t know any painters? Collaboration with the distant and
the dead is no less powerful. Read the work and teachings of other, present
and past, and allow them to reach over the distance and years to show you
what you’ve overlooked.

Collaborating also has the strong advantage of freeing us from our ego.
When we work alone it’s easy to get so wrapped up in our own thing that
our work suffers from narcissism and solipsism. We get self-indulgent. At
times we begin drawing water from a well that’s getting dangerously shallow
or stagnant. A colleague can help us recognize this, bring new life to a proj-
ect, and if we’re sharing the work, will out of necessity insist on sharing the
emotional investment. It’s easier in these contexts to allow our ego to take
the higher ground, to share the credit, and thereby to free ourselves to work
deeper, and broader.
Try this.
Find someone and work on something together.
Go shooting together for a day. During the
morning your partner gives you an assignment
and acts as your assistant and muse, and when
the afternoon comes you switch roles and you
become the instigator, muse, and assistant while
she shoots.

10
Learn your craft.
This one’s the boring one. It is, essentially, the equivalent of the
dance teacher telling her students to stop fooling around and in-
stead to practice the fundamentals. There is little creative about
routine and repetition. You will however find it as the foundation of
every creative craft. The pianist practices his scales until they are
intuitive. The dancer her moves. The actor his lines. Why? Because
nothing with a technical foundation is intuitive initially for most of us.
It becomes intuitive after rehearsal and practice makes it so. We
all want so much to become like Yo-Yo Ma, and want so little to put
in the time he did to gain his prowess with a cello. Why did Henri
Cartier-Bresson master the ability to capture the decisive moment?
Thousands upon thousands of frames. It was he that said “your
first 10,000 photographs are your worst.” He knew his craft, spent
the time required to so that his Leica was no longer a camera in his
hands but an extension of his being that he controlled as sub-con-
sciously as he did his hands or his arms.

To be less obtuse about it; your muse will only inspire you to go
somewhere your craft is prepared to take you. This is what drives
the young photographer crazy; they have a creative impulse they
are dying to use, possibly with more enthusiasm than the seasoned
photographer, but their inspiration only takes them as far as their
craft is able, and that often takes longer than they wish it did.

This is where the artist and the geek most need to collaborate. The
artist within us is dying to express something, the geek is the one
reading the manuals and learning the craft. One without the other
makes us capable photographers with nothing to say or frustrated
artists with lots to say and no means with which to express it.

The more creative you are, the more space you need to give to the
geek inside you, even if that means pushing him into compliance.
You need to learn the technical aspects of your craft, not only in
anticipation of responding to the next great burst of inspiration, but
as a means to instigating it. Let me explain. If you were never to
study or experiment with the way a wide-angle lens can communi-
cate, your inspiration would never lead you to use one. But study it,
play with it, shoot frame after frame with it, and you’ll be pulled back
to it when the time is right. You’ll be doing something entirely differ-
ent, with a different lens, and none of it will be working, when sud-
denly the muse will whisper, “What if you used that wide angle lens
and…?”

Take stock of your skills and abilities, and push yourself into new
areas. Always play with new skills, new tools, new possibilities. I
know, you have no intention of ever, ever using a tilt/shift lens, large
format camera or HDR imaging. But if you’ve read Vol.I of this book
you’ll recall the danger of a closed mind and the importance of say-
ing yes to possibilities. Learn new things, play with them, see where
the possibilities lead.

“You’re only kidding yourself if you put creativity before craft. Craft is
where our best efforts begin. You should not worry that rote exercises
aimed at developing skills will suffocate creativity. At the same time, it’s im-
portant to recognize that demonstrating great technique is not the same as
being creative.”
~ Twyla Tharp, The Creative Habit

“Without passion, all the skill in the world won’t lift you above craft. With-
out skill, all the passion in the world will leave you eager but floundering.
Combining the two is the essence of the creative life.”
~ Twyla Tharp, The Creative Habit

12
Stop censoring yourself.
When we were children we coloured things as our imagination dic-
tated, not as reality insisted. As we grew we became more sensitive
to feedback and the possibility that something we said or did would
make us different. We grew into conformity and bit by bit we grew
into behavior that is the antithesis of creativity. One of the results of
that conformity is self-censorship.

Second-guessing ourselves, or dismissing ideas before they have a

chance to defend themselves or lead us to something else, is very
adult behavior. It’s very rational. And it kills our creativity. No, your
first idea might not be very feasible. It might be really, really stupid.
But it might also lead to something brilliant and by evaluating it first
with a grown-up and pragmatic mind, you can kill the idea before
it ever has a chance to lead somewhere. Not all ideas are meant
to be THE idea. Some are simply there to make the way for better
ideas. That’s the way ideation works. No wonder creative thinking
comes so hard for us. It’s not that it’s irrational, per se, it’s closer to
being trans-rational, but we’ll never get there if the ideas that would
take us there get killed in their infancy because “that’s a stupid
idea.”

What this means from one creative person to another depends on

what the voices are saying, but invariably for all of us it means a
need to let the ideas come without filtration. Filtration needs to hap-
pen, but never before the ideas are out and have a chance to prove
themselves, or to collaborate with other “lousy” ideas. Sometimes
two lousy ideas spark together and ignite something brilliant. Stop
yourself the next time you let efficiency and assumptions get in the
way of your ideation process - take the time to let the ideas get out
there, the more half-baked the better. Ideation is a messy process;
it needs to be.

Writer Anne Lamott talks about this in regards to the writing process
and encourages her students to write crappy first drafts. The crappy
first draft isn’t something in the way of the writing process, it’s the process
itself. You need to get it out there - throw as many ideas and words onto
the paper, then move them around, edit them, order them and delete them
with extreme prejudice. But you do that only once the ideas are out there.

For the photographer this might mean shooting all the way through a
scene or moment, knowing that the shot you’ve just lined up isn’t at all
what you’re hoping for. Put the camera to your eye, make the image. Do it
again. Let the process lead you, get the bad ideas out of the way. For me
it means hundreds - thousands - of images that I call sketches. I will never
print them, never use them, and probably never show them. But they are
sketches, rough drafts of photographs I will one day make, and if I stop
short of making the sketch because it’s imperfect, I’ll never get where I am
going. A sketch isn’t meant to be perfect. It’s imperfection is what makes it
a sketch. It’s the crappy first drafts that lead to the polished final image.

“Creativity requires the courage to let go of certainties.”

~ Erich Fromm

14
“So cheat your landlord if you can and must, but do not try to
shortchange the Muse. It cannot be done.”
~ William S. Burroughs
Fill the bucket.
In Vol.I I suggested one of the key means of unearthing inspiration was to in-
crease the inputs, to breathe in (to in-spire) as much and as many diverse influ-
ences as possible. This is not dissimilar, but it takes it a step further. Increasing
your inputs is a little like digging a stream for a constant flow of new ideas, the
ideas keep moving; they come in, they go out, not unlike breathing. If we extend
the metaphor, this is like digging a pool in the middle of the stream, or like build-
ing a damn. The ideas come in, they flow past, but you control the flow and you
contain the best of them. Why? Why would you not just let the ideas keep flow-
ing, and allow yourself to be inspired by them as they come? Finding a collection
place for your ideas increases the longevity of that inspiration, allowing ideas that
inspire you now to continue to inspire you later. The human memory is not so
infallible as we like to think it is and the best idea in the world can last only sec-
onds and then vanish if you don’t have a mechanism for capturing that idea and
the source that inspired it. The other reason, of course, is that not all sources of
inspiration will inspire us in the same way from day to day. What inspired you to
create something in one way today, might, two months or two years from now,
inspire you to create something entirely different. But chances are, if it grabbed
your imagination now, it will also grab your imagination later, but it might do it in
different ways and that’s valuable.

On my shelves I have a collection of Moleskine notebooks, small black lined jour-

nals into which I put all my ideas, word-pictures, what-ifs, URLs from the internet,
quotes I’ve read and so on. I’ve got places on my computer to file away clipped
images and screenshot of things I’ve seen and been captivated by. I collect the
inspirations, I revisit them, I give them a chance to inspire me over the long term.
Many photographers create a cheat book of some kind, a visual archive of work
they’ve seen that puts new ideas or emotions into play. Whether this is a virtual
thing on your computer or in a program like EverNote, or it’s piles of scraps and
magazine clippings and scribbles, this way of pulling ideas from the stream and
filling the bucket is like increasing the inputs but it’s more like disciplined collect-
ing against the day the muse doesn’t show up. When the well is dry there is a
place you can go to refresh your creative self.
16
18
Dig Deeper.
If the goal of the expressive arts is to take that thing that is inside
and dying to be expressed, and put it on the outside, where it can
be seen, heard, experienced, and shared, then the inner life of the
photographer is not something we consider only in passing, it’s the
ground we’re digging in to uncover these diamonds. Whether you
are a poet or a photographer, and Chris Orwig does an excellent job
in Visual Poetry of correlating the two - you need to be in touch with
the inner stuff. The deeper you dig, the more honest and unique will
be your work.

To switch metaphors, this is a little like unlocking a series of doors.

The further you are willing to go, the more willing you are to unlock
the deeper doors and explore the chambers behind them, the more
able you will be to create work that is uniquely yours. This means,
in short, a need to be honest with, and face, our fears. Fear of fall-
ing short, of being compared with others, of failing - these all para-
lyze us unless we face them and call them by name. I don’t mean
we eradicate them, many of our fears will be with us our whole
lives, but you can call them out, recognize them, and do your best
work despite them. In fact our fears often lead to our best work, but
you have to face them first. I suspect Edvard Munch’s painting The
Scream came from facing something deep in himself. You can’t well
express something you’ve never looked at.

As artists we all compare ourselves with others, we treat our own

work and talent will less regard than that of others. Or, alternately,
we act like divas and appraise our work more highly than we ought
to. Both false-humility and arrogance hinder honest creativity.
Comparing ourselves or our work is a denial of the value of unique
expression. We say, as photographers, that so-and-so’s work is
“so much better than mine,” or that so-and-so is “one of the best”
photographers. What does that mean? I’m in agreement that there
are masters of this craft, but I’m not sure that the language we use
is helpful. You task is to work on your craft so that it is equal to the
task of expressing your unique vision, and that is not something that
can ever find a point of comparison with another. And if you must
compare, then do it with fairness to yourself and be specific. What
is that other photographer better at? Is his use of exposure more
intentional? Then learn from that. Is her recognition of a moment
more apparently intuitive than yours? Then learn from that too. At
its extreme, comparison gives us an excuse for going no further, for
being lazy or undisciplined, and that leads to creativity that is crip-
pled by our excuses. It’s a reversal of the habit of asking “what if?”
which is a question that opens us to possibility, and instead it simply
answers, like an impatient adult to a child, “because I said so, that’s
why.” It shuts us down, and the muse goes elsewhere until we’re
more concerned about expressing ourselves honestly than we are
about measuring up to someone else.

Lastly, digging deep means not only increasing the inputs - which
is essentially a quantitative thing - but choosing better inputs. Why
feed creatively on Flickr only when you could look at work from
the last hundred years? Why read only the most recent articles in
Photography Geek Monthly when you could also be reading Ansel
Adams’ The Camera, Henri Cartier-Bresson’s The Mind’s Eye, or
Susan Sontag’s On Photography? For that matter, why limit your-
self to photography books at all? Dig deeper, dig broader, dig into
the past, and you’ll find the stream keeps filling that hole with fresh
water. Your muse won’t drown in too much water; the only danger is
in too little water.

“A muse can be a mirror: a reflection of the artist’s desires, anxieties, dreams and needs. ”
~ Vince Aletti

20
“The man who arrives at the doors of artistic creation with none of the madness
of the Muses would be convinced that technical ability alone was enough to
make an artist...what that man creates by means of reason will pale before the art
of inspired beings.”
~Plato
“Creative work is not a selfish act or a bid for attention on the part of the actor.
It’s a gift to the world and every being in it. Don’t cheat us of your contribution.
Give us what you’ve got”
~ Steven Pressfield, The War of Art

22
Let It Flow.
I found the idea for this concept in an unexpected place, I blogged about
it a few years ago and the idea has planted itself in my brain, has been
growing ever since. It began as a speculation about the nature of cre-
ativity; I’m now more convinced than ever that it’s fundamental to the
creative life. Here is that original post, now edited and updated.

My Jewish friends and family just celebrated Passover, a time of cel-

ebration and commemoration of the release of the Jewish nation from
slavery in Egypt, thousands of years ago, under the leadership of Mo-
ses. In broad strokes: God, through Moses, says Let My people go,
Pharaoh says no, God wipes out every firstborn as the final act of an
escalating series of plagues. Those spared, the ones whom the angel of
death passed over, had the blood of a lamb smeared on the door posts.
Gruesome stuff and not the tidiest story to reconcile with my theology
of love and forgiveness, but try as we do, theology ain’t tidy. Anyway,
fast forward to the desert, the escaped Hebrews, likely close to a million
strong, are now wandering aimlessly, and hungry. So God provides a
food they call Manna, a word meaning “What the heck is this stuff?” Se-
riously, that’s what it means. Though I doubt the word “heck” is a literal
translation.

Manna was a flaky food, and while it’s called bread, it seems that might
only have been the closest thing to compare it to. God provides it daily.
Enough for everyone. But there’s a catch. With the exception of the
Sabbath they’re told they can’t store it. They have to trust that it’ll be
there the next day. And the next. And the next. Eat it while you have it,
because it turns putrid pretty quick.

I think there are some things in life, intangible things that come to us
from beyond ourselves, that are meant to be exercised and used as
we’re given them, with no stockpiling allowed. I think faith is like this,
whether its object is God or other people. Love too. Hope, certainly. And
creativity.
The more I study creativity, the more sure I am that the study of it leads
to more questions than answers. It’s not a process that can be pinned
down and dissected. It’s often unpredictable. And it doesn’t store well.
We play by its rules or not at all. Creativity’s like manna. It comes from
somewhere outside ourselves, a gift, and one that’s meant to be used,
every ounce of it, without thought for tomorrow. Don’t pace yourself,
don’t stockpile, don’t hoard it. Creativity grows with the expenditure and
shrinks with the hoarding. Creativity is a gift intended to produce more
gifts. It is something to be given, not kept to ourselves.

I think there are two implications to this. The first is that we need to treat
our creativity and the efforts produced by that creativity like manna. We
collect it, we use it up while we have it. It means we make hay while the
sun shines. If you’re in a particularly creative frame of mind, don’t pace
yourself - sprint to the finish. Use that creative burst like fuel and burn as
hot as you can while you have it. After all, you may wake up tomorrow,
or next week, and find your muse has gone and it’ll be back to going
out and looking for inspiration with a club, as Jack London once said.
We can be creative every day, and inspiration comes from working, but
there are times when the flow is stronger and faster. When those times
come, redeem them.

The second implication is one that photographer Chase Jarvis has

talked about with his Create & Share paradigm, one that Lewis Hyde
discusses in his book, The Gift, and one many creatives of many disci-
plines have talked about. Creativity is a force that compels us to express
ourselves in unique ways, to create something new, and that thing we
create is a gift to the world. We put it out there as it comes, not keeping
it to ourselves. The world is a richer place for the poets that shared their
work, whether or not they were ever paid for it. Where would we be with-
out the influence of Picasso, Monet, the Pre-Raphaelites, Rembrandt,
etc.? Whatever their motives, they created, they shared and we’re richer
for it. I think the more we put into the world, the more that comes back to
us, creatively, like a creative tide that moves in and out, bring with high-
tide, new things to the beach.

The creative life is about risks, not caution. About now, not later. And
it’s about trusting that the creativity will be there when we need it. Don’t
hold back. Give it away. Don’t pace yourself. Burn bright while the fuel is
there and do it in such a way that others see the light of your flame. 24
A Conversation with
Chris Orwig
Q: I think people assume that professional pho-
tographers and photographic educators don’t
experience problems of creative funk and lack of
inspiration. You not only have a particular interest
in this but you’ve also spoken to many photogra-
phers about this very stuff. Would you say this is a
foundational issue that applies from beginner to
even the masters in their craft?
A: Yes, I’d say its definitely a foundational is-
sue. Being a photographer and being faculty at
Brooks has given me the opportunity to get to
know a wide range of photographers - everyone
from absolute beginners to many of the world
famous legends of our craft. One of the common
threads that I’ve noticed is that every good and
growing photographer, regardless of age, ex-
perience or status, eventually goes through the
painful experience of feeling uninspired. What’s
most interesting to me is how people face this
experience. There are those who retreat while
others push through the darkness. Some wither
while others discover clarity and renewal on the
other side.
This has always interested me so I’ve made it
a habit of talking with both groups. One of the
things that I have discovered is that it seems that
how we deal with being uninspired is connected
to who we are and how we relate to photography.
For example, it’s easy to fall in love with the idea
of creating breathtaking, awe inspiring, thought
provoking and compelling photographs. Yet, the
path and process of creating those types of im-
ages requires more than puppy dog love.
It requires a “come hell or high water” passion,
an indefatigable spirit, an iron strong imagina-
tion, persistence and an immense amount of
endurance. Viktor Frankl said it best, “What is
to give light must endure burning.” If you want
to shine, if you want your work to shine, you’re
going to have to be willing to dig deep in order
to push through to the other side. And in regards
to inspiration, you have to look beyond yourself,
your talents and your small world. Think about
it: inspiration isn’t inspiring unless it’s huge. If
you’re feeling uninspired it’s probably that you
aren’t dreaming big enough dreams.
Q: If there’s a photographer’s equivalent to writer’s
block, what’s the cause and how do you suggest
photographers punch through this block?
The creative block that happens to photogra-
phers can be incredibly stifling. One of the things
I’ve discovered is that this issue seems to be
related to the larger issue of burnout. Let me
explain. As a teacher, it’s expected that some
of your students go on to soar to great heights
while others sink to the bottom. Yet, what I didn’t
expect was that a number of my students would
completely burn out. I mean burn out to the point
of not having any interest in doing photography
at all. Sometimes the burnout happens during
school and other times it happens later down the
road. Because of my role as a teacher, mentor or
friend I’ve come across many dried up, burned
out and uninspired photographers.
Each encounter has saddened me in a different
way. It’s heart breaking to see someone who was
once excited and passionate now become bitter
and confused. Each time I ask the photographer
what happened. Of course they never know. I
keep asking questions and looking for some way
to makes sense of things.
What I’ve discovered is a common thread
among practically every person I’ve talked with.
Eventually I ask, “What did you do before photo
school?” or “What did you do before moving to
New York and starting your photography studio?”
And when I ask this “what did you do before”
question they instantly light up. Their eyes open
wide, they lean forward and start to tell me about
how they used to go mountain biking, or horse
back riding, or do yoga, play an instrument. You
get the idea. Then I ask, “Well what did you do
in photo school” or “What did you do once you
moved to New York?” The answer as you can
predict is always, “Photo stuff.” I prod a bit more
as ask, “What else?” They respond, “Photo stuff.”
And herein lies the problem.
As Einstein so eloquently said, “Insanity is doing
the same thing over and over again expecting
different results.” If all you do is photography,
you’re bound to dry up pretty fast; what will start
as small instances of “writer’s block” will soon
turn into larger seasons of feeling dry, uninspired
and eventually completely burned out. I think this
happens because photography, like many of the
others arts, is intimately intertwined with one’s
core identity. As Jay Maisel once said to one
student at our photo school, “If you want to make
more interesting photographs, become a more
interesting person.”
Thus, the answer to the question, “How do
you suggest photographers punch through this
block?” is actually quite simple: Do something
different. And do something different on a regular
basis. If you want to think outside of the box you
have to act outside of the box. You have to make
variety a regular part of who you are and how
you live. You have to become a more well-round-
ed, engaged and interesting person. If you’re not
convinced try it for yourself. The next time you
face “writer’s block” rather than sit and stare at a
blank screen, do something you’ve never done
before: climb a tree, visit a museum, pick up a
new instrument, or play a new sport.
Q: You see hundreds of students come through
Brooks Institute, would you say some of them are
more creative than others or just differently-cre-
ative? I guess what I’m getting at is this - are some
of us born more creative than others or is creativ-
ity something we’re all born with, something to be
honed or pulled to the surface?
There are those who argue that creativity is a gift
limited to the elect. I believe the exact opposite.
I think that creativity is universal. I believe that
creativity is something that is innate to being a
human. I like how Paul Arden put it, “Creativity is
imagination and imagination is for everyone.”
When we were younger creativity wasn’t such a
problem. Often as we age the tide turns.
As Picasso said, “The chief enemy of creativity
is common sense.” We start to give in to ratio-
26
nal thinking and our imaginations wither. Again
Picasso says it best, “All children are artists, the
problem is to remain one when we grow up.”
And that’s true isn’t it? For example, when I visit
my wife’s classroom at the elementary school
where she teaches I often ask, “How many of
you can draw?” Every student raises his or her
hand. I then ask, “How many of you can sing?”
Again every child raises their hand and they
actually begin to sing. Contrast that to the col-
lege classroom where I ask the same question of
my budding photographer students. When I ask,
“How many of you can sing?” or “How many of
you can draw?” only a few brave students raise
their hands.
The different response stems directly from the
college students adding a “rational qualifier” to
my questions. While I asked “How many of you
can sing?” They heard, “How many of you can
sing well?” It is this type of qualifier that lead
certain students to “If only” thinking. If only.... I
lived in New York then I would be a good pho-
tographer. If only.... I had a better camera then
my pictures would be strong. And this type of “If
only” thinking is actually quite toxic, almost like
a parasite it feeds off of it’s host. It soon dries up
the wells of imagination and creativity and these
students eventually drop out or fail.
On the other hand, the students who tap into
their innate creativity and then make the effort
to nurture and develop new sources of imagina-
tion and creativity tend to be unstoppable. They
have a distinct sparkle in their eyes. They are
gracious, hard working, disciplined, focused and
fully alive. Their creativity is contagious and it
lights a fire everywhere they go.
One of my favorite definitions of creativity is this:
“Creativity is taking the ordinary sensory data
that is available to us all and seeing it in a new
way.” That’s a perfect definition because it re-
veals that at its core creativity is about making
the ordinary extraordinary. Therefore if you want
to become more creative, start with where you
are and with what you have. The more ordinary
the context, the more potential for greatness.
Q:Would you agree that photographic creativity
is a discipline that can be practiced, and if so, what
does your creative practice look like? Is it daily?
Weekly?
Almost everything in life that is worthwhile re-
quires effort and discipline. And photographic
creativity is no exception. If you want to create
awe-inspiring photographs it will take strong re-
solve and regular practice. In the same way, right
now I am learning how to play the cello. If I want
to make beautiful music it will require weeks,
months, and years of practice.
Yet, there is a secret that few discover about
practice and the creative arts. The secret is
that the practice is the reward. And the more
you practice the more the reward and the more
you’ll want to practice. Photography is the same
way. The more you look through the lens the
more it helps you to learn how to truly see. The
more you see the more you will grow, develop
and change. It’s like what the great climber and
mountaineer Travis Blue says, “If we only climb
mountains to get to the top, we miss out on the
experience of the mountain changing who we
truly are.”
The longer I live, the more aware I become that
life is short. As this growing awareness gains
momentum it simultaneously fuels and furthers a
desire to live life to the hilt. And photography has
become a key component to learning how to live
a more full & meaningful life. Photography helps
me think, slow down, and savor many of the
wonderful aspects of life. Photography heightens
my experience and deepens my resolve to live
my life as it was intended to be.
So yes, I believe that photographic creativity is
a discipline that can be practiced and I practice
it often. For me photography is about looking,
listening, being present, deepening my apprecia-
tion of life and developing who I am as a whole
person. Therefore photography isn’t something
that I do or don’t do. Rather, it is part of the fabric
of who I am. This means that I have lofty life
goals, I take time to read good books, I journal,
I hike, I bike, I surf big waves, I rush home from
work to play with my young daughters, I dream
big dreams, I stop, I listen, I press the shutter.
Q: Writer Jack London says that you don’t wait for
inspiration, you go after it with a club. How do you
see inspiration?
From a very young age, I decided that I would
not settle for a tepid or lukewarm life. And when
I first discovered Jack London, I was enlivened
by this man who was so full of fight and fire. For
him, the call of the wild wasn’t just an idea it was
a reality. I remember reading his words, “I would
rather be a superb meteor, every atom of me in
magnificent glow, that a sleepy and permanent
planet.” Then later I came across this plea, “The
proper function of man is to live, not to exist.
I shall not waste my days in trying to prolong
them. I shall use my time.” These words continue
to kindle my desire to live a full and complete life.
I agree with London that inspiration requires pur-
suit and passion. Inspiration is anything but the
passive visit from the muse while I sleep. Inspira-
tion requires that I run hard until I’m out of breath
in order to position myself to cross its path. In-
spiration requires that I get up before the sunrise
to sit, listen and think. Inspiration requires that I
surround myself with people who excel, engage
and challenge. Inspiration requires that I commit
and follow through.
Q: When it comes to fostering our creativity,
or listening to the muse, what are the common
pitfalls you see your students experiencing? For
example, too many of us censor our ideas before
letting them run their course. In fact, let me ask
this with a more rhetorical device - if you could list
10 effective ways to kill your creative process, what
would those 10 ways be?
In regards to photography, here’s my top 10
1. Spend more time passively watch
ing, learning & reading about photography
than actually doing photography.
2. Own and carry expensive gear.
3. Impersonate other photographers.
4. Become talented and take your
self very seriously.
5. Dream small dreams.
6. Accept mediocrity.
7. Impatiently press the shutter.
8. Look but do not listen.
9. Ignore your instincts.
10. Not knowing when to set the camera
down.
28
Q: You’ve inspired me, in our conversations, and
in reading your book Visual Poetry, to go back to
shooting film as a means to jumping some of my
creative ruts. Tell us about your weird little film
fetish - how many cameras, different formats, etc.
Why do you indulge this lunacy when the rest of
the world knows digital is “better than film”?
Long story short, one day I found myself over
at Seal (the musician) and Heidi Klum’s home
in Beverly Hills. Seal and I were up in his studio
and we were talking about Photoshop, Lightroom
and photography. At one point in the conversa-
tion Seal said something that struck a cord. He
said, “When I shoot with film I embrace mistakes.
When I shoot with digital I look for the mistake.”
This comment really got me thinking about ev-
erything digital. Much of the promise of digital is
perfection, yet from my perspective perfection
isn’t really the goal.
Even more, over the last few years I’ve had the
privilege of investing a lot of energy into refin-
ing and honing my digital skills. So much so that
a number of people started to refer to me as a
“digital guru.” While this reference is meant to be
a compliment, I’m grateful yet I don’t necessarily
take it as one. If I were to be a guru I’d want to
be a guru at living life with humility, authentic-
ity, passion and creativity. From my perspective,
while I fully embrace all things digital, the point
isn’t digital. Rather it is as Marc Riboud said,
“Photography is about savoring life at 1/100th of
a second.” The point is to get more out of life and
to become a more engaged and alive individual.
The point is to create compelling and engaging
photographs.
So back to the question, “Why indulge in this
lunacy when the rest of the world knows digital is
better than film?” Digital is definitely amazing and
it is better in a number of ways, but it isn’t better
in every way. For example, when I’m using my
old wooden large format camera the physical-
ity of the process requires that I slow down. Not
only does it take time but every time I press the
shutter release it costs. And the cost is significant
in regards to time, effort and dollars and cents.
This cost requires that I am committed, engaged
and focused. Thus, I create pictures that I could
have never created with digital capture. Even
more, I learn things that I could have never
learned with digital.
Consider the following comparison. Let’s say
that you go out and buy a really nice acoustic
guitar. You could tinker and teach yourself to
play and it would be a ton of fun. Yet, if I decided
to take lessons and those lessons cost $250 a
lesson could you imagine how much you would
learn. The sheer cost of the lessons would cause
you to step up to the plate, rise to the occasion
and really practice, focus and learn. In that same
way, I’ve found film to be a great teacher.
In regards to the actual cameras, here’s what
I’ve been experimenting with: an assortment of
8x10 and 4x5 cameras, Hasselblad 503, Holga,
Blackbird and Yashica Super T4. Yet, I’m sure
you’re picking up the point that it isn’t about try-
ing one camera versus another. Rather the point
is to tap into the larger historical photographic
context and to take time to learn and experiment
in order to further and deepen your own photo-
graphic journey and process.
Q: We talk so little about the inner life of the pho-
tographer, and yet it’s that inner life - the things we
wrestle with, the way we see the world: the things,
people, and places with which we’re in love, that
so often drive what we shoot. How do we tap into
our inner lives in order to better our photography?
Much of photographic education is about fill-
ing ourselves up. In other words, it’s about how
can I learn something, apply what I’ve learned
in order to achieve what I wanted to achieve.
While this approach makes sense and feeds
our desire to grow and change, it can potentially
fall short when it comes to tapping into our in-
ner lives. It’s easy to become puffed up on the
outside and empty on the inside. Yet, the great
photographers that I know nurture and develop a
strong “inside” that eventually makes its way into
their pictures on the outside. How then can we
begin to do this ourselves? I’m not exactly sure
as it will surely mean different things to differ-
ent people. The one bit of advice that I can give
comes from my own experience.
I have never attended photography school. Yet,
at the same time I am not completely self-taught.
I’ve had a number of unlikely teachers along the
way. For example, a number of years ago, I had
the opportunity of take a few months to volun-
teer at a hospital working with cancer patients.
Without knowing it, the people at the hospital
become my friends and mentors. As they were
dying they taught me so much about life. To this
day, I consider those few months my greatest
photographic education. They taught me about
not giving up, about savoring every moment,
about the value of people and family and more.
In addition, while I obviously didn’t learn anything
technical at the hospital, that experience fueled
my passion for refining and perfecting my techni-
cal expertise.
So how does all of this relate to you? Again I’m
not entirely sure, yet my hope is that this story
might prompt you to begin to look for your own
unlikely photographic teachers. Once you start to
look, you’ll soon discover that there is so much to
learn from so many different types of people.
Q: Do you have any favorite books or images in
which you find inspiration?
While there are a ton of great resources out
there, here are a couple you may not have heard
of that are definitely worthwhile:
Tao of Photography: Seeing Beyond Seeing
Philippe L. Gross
Poetics of Music in the Form of Six Lessons...
Igor Stravinsky
Henri Cartier-Bresson: The Impassioned Eye
(Movie)
Q: Any last thoughts?
If you want to create more compelling photo-
graphs, take time to discover and document your
passions. Be sure to photograph people, places
and things that inspire you most and that mean
the most to you. If you truly care about the con-
tent of your photographs, there’s a chance that
others will as well.
Chris Orwig is a visual artist who brings passion to
all that he does. He is a photographer, author, and
sits on the faculty of the world-renowned Brooks
Institute of Photography in Santa Barbara, Califor-
nia. Chris is the author of Visual Poetry, A Creative
Guide for Making Engaging Digital Photographs.
For more inspiration visit ChrisOrwig.com
30
Conclusion.
The more voices you listen to the greater the chances of finding, or being
found by, inspiration. The muses move as they like but it never hurts to have
a personal introduction from others.

That’s why I asked my friend Chris Orwig to contribute; his voice is an impor-
tant one and he’s got different things to say than I might. It’s also why I want
to refer you to others. I asked Chris about his recommendations and here are
mine.

These are some of the books I return to for inspiration about the creative life
and process.

The Creative Habit, Twyla Tharp

The War of Art, Steven Pressfield

The Writing Life, Annie Dillard

Walking on Water, Reflections on Art and Faith, Madeleine L’Engle

Ignore Everybody and 39 Other Keys to Creativity, Hugh MacLeod

Oddly, not one of these has a thing to do with photography. The library we
share as photographers is perilously thin when it comes to discussions of
creativity itself, and we are all poorer for it, but I think our need to look outside
of our own discipline in this regard can also force us to draw from other wells,
and that’s a good thing.

Increase your inputs, draw from many wells, and deeply.

And then go show us something inspired.

“O! for a muse of fire, that would ascend the brightest heaven of invention.”
~ William Shakespeare

The Inspired Eye, Notes on Creativity for Photographers,Vol. II

David duChemin
Craft&Vision
Pixelated Image Communications Inc
#201-1080 Gilford St.
Vancouver, BC V6G 2P4
Canada
604-209-5900
CraftAndVision.com

Copyright © 2010 by David duChemin

Editor & Publisher, David duChemin

Notice of Rights
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form
by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher.
32
IMPROVE YOUR CRAFT
BUY LESS GEAR

Still Only $5
at CraftAndVision.com