Stop sign #9 – Everyone is so much better than I am. Answer: True, they are. Get over it and take your photos. Pretty soon you will be who the faint hearted ones look at and say ‘they are so much better than I’.
There are those who feel they know everything and as a result have nothing left to learn. There are those who feel they know nothing and as a result are afraid to learn. Both types miss out because they have wrong thinking about it. Their thoughts in that case are all about ‘self’. The ‘know-it-all’ is wanting to show the world how much he or she knows. The ‘know-nothing’ is consumed with what others will think of them.
What both have in common is a lack of concern for others.
The know-it-all isn’t out to encourage and motivate and lift up those who aren’t as educated and as a result more often than not diminishes and puts down those who know less. People don’t like to follow ‘know-it-alls’ and so they eventually find themselves alone and bitter.
The ‘know-nothings’ aren’t thinking about what gifts they do offer to others. They are also not thinking how their need for education might be a gift a teacher needs to get motivated themselves. They don’t realize that teachers need students, mentors need mentees (mentoes, mentals?). All they are thinking about is how they will appear to others and so they hide and bewail their shortcomings. They are tiresome.
What both types have in common is selfishness.
So, yes, there are people who know more than you. They are better at lighting, cameras, painting, drawing, selling, marketing, planning, printing, talking, on and on and on.
Will that fact (and it is a fact) make you hide, or will it inspire you to go find those people and have their input and help in your art life?
Stop sign #8 – It costs too much. Answer: What is it you can’t afford? A point and shoot camera? A computer? Transportation? Membership fees? Be creative, find a camera at a pawn shop, or a resale shop. If you can’t afford a new computer, once again, find a refurbished one. Maybe trade services for what you need. You don’t have to go anywhere to create interesting photos, you have yourself as a subject, and you don’t have to travel to get there do you? You have your home, your yard, your sidewalk, your street signs.
I realized by having children that we are all capable of saying we don’t have the time or the money to do something. But I found out that without exception my children almost always found a way to do the things they REALLY wanted to do. That usually did not include cleaning out the garage with dad, so in that case they had too much homework. But a call from a friend to go to the movies, well, in that case, they realized they could do their homework when they got home, or in the morning. In other words, they WANTED to go to the movies, and found a way.
In other words, don’t say ‘I can’t afford it’. Say instead ‘HOW can I afford it?’ and go out and find the way.
Do you WANT to be a photographer, an artist, a creative person? Then you WILL find a way and you will not use excuses.
Stop sign #7 – I don’t know what to photograph. Answer: What are you passionate about? photograph that. Even if it is your secret doll fetish or chronicling the cutting of your toenails. Artists who continue to create art are the ones who have admitted to themselves and the world what it is they love. They have courage.
There are two things you must love to be successful. One, you must love your subject. You must feel passion and love and excitement about it. If it is old couches, fine. If it is women, fine. If it is carpet samples, fine. If it is women on old couches looking at carpet samples, fine. It doesn’t matter what you have a passion about, what matters is you admit it.
Two, you have to love the process, not just the end result, of creating your art. If you don’t then eventually you will find ways to not create it. So, if you don’t love setting up lights and getting all your equipment in synch to create a great studio image, chances are you won’t do that as often as you need to be successful at it. If you don’t like climbing out in nature, getting dirty and sweaty and being at the mercy of the elements, then chances are you will not be a great, or even mediocre, wildlife photographer.
You get my point? What do you love? Subject, style, process? Admit that and do that.
Couldn’t resist, a woman on a couch (but without carpet samples).
Stop sign #6 – What if people don’t like what I do? Answer: Guess what? They WON’T like what you do! At least many won’t. Many might, some will. But that is like saying what if someone doesn’t like my flower garden or looks or gift, etc. So what? Are you not going to plant your garden or wash your face and comb your hair or give any gifts because MAYBE someone won’t like your choices? NO, of course not. You will go do those things. So, time to do a reality check and realize that the normal state of the creative life is that someone won’t like what you do. That isn’t bad, it’s to be expected. Embrace it, have it be an acceptable part of your understanding about life.
The Denver Art Museum, by Daniel Libeskind – I have a funny feeling many Denverites don’t like this building, though I am sure many do as well. What sort of building would have been built if the goal was to have everyone like the building?
Denver Museum over the street
Inside the Museum – Molten Polyester, by Ed Ruscha – I am sure this isn’t universally loved or understood by all that see it. What would this image look like if Mr. Ruscha worried incessantly about whether people would like it?
Stop sign #5 – I don’t have time. Answer: How much time does it take to snap a photo of yourself behind the wheel waiting in traffic, the full kitchen sink, the beautiful toy in the sunlight in your kid’s room. It isn’t time you are lacking, it is imagination and decisiveness. Keep your camera with you. If you have a big honkin cadillac of a camera, then get your phone out when you are on the go. FIND A WAY to take the photo!
This photo was at a local diner. It took no more than 20 seconds to get my camera on the table, take the shot, review the shot and put the camera back down on my seat. It isn’t time you are lacking.
Stop sign #4 – I am not educated in art and photography. Answer: Praise the Lord God Almighty you aren’t! Get over it and take some photos. There are many highly educated ‘artists’ who are picking their noses watching TV and eating too much instead of using their talents. They aren’t worth doodoo compared to one person with passion and vision even without a formal education. What matters is the doing. If you do the work you will learn.
That doesn’t mean there aren’t things to learn in a formal setting, there are. I have 2 degrees in art because I wanted to learn. I learned about printmaking, drawing, art history, certain artmaking techniques, and a bit about the art world.
But I had no formal training as a photographer at all. My sole educational work in photography was about 3-4 sessions in a dark room during grad school with another student who taught me the basics in exchange for me teaching him the basics of lithography. The truth is the vast majority of my creativity and my end results as an artist are not a function of my formal education, they are a function of my desire and my passion.
There is a woman on Flickr, Rebekka Guðleifsdóttir, probably the most visited of all the millions on flickr. She was doing pencil portraits when she found flickr and decided to try photography. Within 2 years she had 3 million views and a contract with Toyota to photograph their cars. She is a single mother of 2 sons. She lives in….ICELAND! She is as far from the center of the photography and art world as you can imagine. But she didn’t use that as an excuse. She didn’t use her children as an excuse. She didn’t use her lack of photography education as an excuse. What she did was go out into the middle of the dark Icelandic winter and take photos of 100-200 second exposures in FREEZING cold. She is now getting an art education, but the point is she didn’t wait. She went and ACTED.
Part 3 of a 10 part series on stop signs in your head that keep you from creating art.
Stop sign #3 – My equipment isn’t good enough. Answer: Then you would have to explain why photographer’s work from 75-100 years ago are worth thousands and esteemed the world over as great photographs when their equipment sucked compared to ours now. Even if all you have is a point and shoot, it is YOU that makes the photo great, not the camera.
This photo, by my friend Aikithereska on flickr, was made with a rudimentary pinhole camera. No aperture, no shutter speed, just a hole in a box. You can’t get any more primitive photographic equipment than that. And she got a great photo out of it.
The point is, lack of equipment is an excuse and shows a lack of imagination. Go out and take photos with what you have, quit waiting for a better something.
“A Genius is someone who simply has fewer stop signs in their head.”
Each day for this week and next I am telling about 10 stop signs to creativity that I have learned about over the years.
Stop sign #2 – It’s not perfect. Answer: According to who? If it is a print and is too green, blurred, flared, dark, whatever. Then collage it with something that makes that ‘negative’ stand out. An art piece is not limited to one photo all by itself. Draw on it, Cut it in stripes and layer it over the same exact shot you took that is good. Cut the worst part of the image out and tack that bad part on your wall, look at it, find something in it. Keep tacking up the pad parts until you find something interesting.
If it is a digital image in your computer, make a copy of it, then do special effects on it up the wazoo until it is something cool or at least you learned something. Go to the extreme with each setting, see how far you can take it.
The point is waiting for perfection is an excuse. It shows lack of creativity and imagination and it shows a worry about what others will think instead of seeing things through original eyes.
“A Genius is someone who simply has fewer stop signs in their head.” part 1
This week and next I am dedicating to those things that keep YOU from doing art. I have 10 ‘Stop Signs’ that can stop you in your creative tracks faster than a head-on with a semi. They may seem harsh, but that is because they are. Just imagine Simon Cowell talking to an artist instead of a singer and you will get the attitude I am trying to put forth here.
Stop sign #1 – it’s boring. Answer: No, YOU are boring. Not the place, person or event. If you can’t take interesting photos wherever you are, then YOU aren’t interesting and you aren’t interesting because you aren’t INTERESTED in the world around you. Look at details, look from the floor, look straight down, look in a corner.
I saw this as we were walking into Eskimo Joe’s in Stillwater, Oklahoma. It was the hostess leaning up against the glass brick seen from outside and it was as boring a scene as you can imagine. I bet thousand of people have gone by that glass brick when someone was leaning up against it and not one noticed or took a photo. Why not? Because they didn’t expect to see anything worth noticing and weren’t paying attention. Pay attention to unexpected angles and views.
Another in my ‘Rejection Suite’ made of job application rejection letters on top of which I collaged self-rejected photos of mine. In each case I left showing certain words from the letter that hit me.
The Guillotine image came because of the bright red photo I had of the side of a vintage restored car. It had it on my art table with the yellow square next to it and saw the possibility of a head rolling out of the yellow square, simple as that. Thanks to Cyndi, my former sister-in-law for letting her head roll in this image.
