Creativity: Part I

Do a search for the word "creativity" through either Google or Yahoo and you will get 69,800,000 hits. Quite amazing concidering that we all know what to be creative means - or do we?

So what is Creativity? Is it the act of turning ideas into reality? Or is it the simple act of just being imaginative? In some ways I think that being creative is what we all are striving to be. If it's through art, invention, business or love we all want to have a unique perspective and to be able to share that with others.
Personally, I like to think of creativity as having a passion and commitment to follow through on an idea - and using that to turn ideas into a reality.

How many of us have been trying to sleep, mind racing with thoughts, and a great idea comes into our heads? It happens to me all the time. How often do I write them down? Hardly ever. In my head I have written numerous, and I might add brilliant, movie scripts, great ideas for posts to this blog and unique ways to reach art directors. I always say "Oh, I'll remember that..." The next morning I rarely do.

So this weekend I am gong to take photos inspired from a past photo shoot I did of a white chair - see images below. I thought about it, came up with an idea, wrote it down and now I am going to make it a reality.

So tune in to see what I come up with - I will probably, hopefully, surprise myself.

Convenient Truths

I was recently reminded of a quote by WC Fields: "If at first you don't succeed, try, try again. Then quit. There's no point in being a damn fool about it." Two things came to mind when I heard this - the Environment and Photography. Too many times people quit before they've really explored possible outcomes or tried to be successful at something. They are, what I would like to call, believers in the Convenient Truth.
They play it safe, never taking chances - afraid of being the damn fool.
There are times when being "the fool" means that you are the one that will succeed.

Pushing yourself to find new ways of shooting or using PhotoShop or actually believing that we are effecting our planet - and can change our habits in order to survive. These are the ones who will survive.

One of the great things about photography is that we can combine art with what's going on in the world. I recently went through some images in my stock archive on the environmental and noticed that many are about the relationship with our surroundings - how we effect it and play in it. Whether it is how we use and treat our air and water, what we leave behind when hiking and camping or how we travel - we have both a possitive and negative effect on the environment. Once we start truely believing this "Inconvenient Truth" we will begin to convert all the "damn fools" who want to take the Convenient path.

Here are some images from my archive