Levni Yilmaz’sTales of Mere Existence are creative, funny, and insightful.
Find more Tales of Mere Existence here.
Find more creativity videos here.
Read more in my creativity ebooks here.
Learn more in my creativity workshops here.
Levni Yilmaz’s Tales of Mere Existence are creative, funny, and insightful.
Find more Tales of Mere Existence here.
Find more creativity videos here.
Read more in my creativity ebooks here.
Learn more in my creativity workshops here.
Austin Kleon finds poetry in newspapers.
“Instead of starting with a blank page, poet Austin Kleon grabs the New York Times and a permanent marker and eliminates the words he doesn’t need.”— NPR’s Morning Edition
“…a kind of Rorschach approach to reading newspapers…” —The Wall Street Journal
“The poems] resurrect the newspaper when everyone else is declaring it dead…like a cross between magnetic refrigerator poetry and enigmatic ransom notes, funny and zen-like, collages of found art…” —The New Yorker
This is a great creative exercise. Try it!
Find more of my resources for creativity here.
Make a plan.
Whether you’re engaged in your creative life professionally or simply as a vehicle for personal growth (an important distinction to make), I recommend you make a creative plan. If you do this, you too will find both your productivity and fulfillment will increase, in a way that’s meaningful to you. Having defined what you need to accomplish, your unconscious will go to the work of fulfilling it, generating many ideas over time. You’ll find yourself ready to make the most of unexpected opportunities as they arise. Put this all in writing using your own words. Writing increases retention 72%. If you write something down, you’ll be 75% more likely to take action on it. Remember, while other people can help you discuss and refine your plan as it develops, no one can do it for you. For you to truly understand and benefit from it, you have to do it. More importantly, for it to be right for you, it has to be yours.
Break it down into clear manageable pieces.
Set a mission (why you’re doing it), goals (what outcomes you want), projects (the big things you do)(set goals for 1 year, 2 years, 3 years, 5 years, and end of life) and actions (the small steps you take to getting your projects done)(detail your 1 year next actions list) for your creative life. You’ll have one mission, several goals, many projects, and innumerable actions.
Align your creative mission with your life’s mission.
Most people need at least two missions; one for their life in general (which includes many things – health, family, finances, etc) and one for a specific area, like their career or creative life, which may or many not be the same. Make sure that your missions share something in common – something other than yourself. The more you can align the them, the more likely you are to achieve them, increase your productivity, and be more fulfilled.
Set priorities.
Set timelines.
Chart your progress.
Be flexible.
Update your plan.
A plan is a work in progress. The best plans are flexible and can be modified. If I don’t learn something new from a process, often something that shifts my perspective significantly enough to start doing something better than before, then I feel I haven’t truly excelled at what I’m doing. I expect to improve my plans.
The time you spend clarifying why you’re doing what you’re doing and what you’d like to see come of it will save you hours, months, even years by ensuring that you’re going in the right direction – a direction of your own choosing. When you make a plan, you take control of your life.
Read the extended version in AfterCapture.
Read more in my essay Developing Personal Projects.
Read more in my Creativity lessons.
Learn more in my Creativity workshops.
“The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscape but in having new eyes.”
Marcel Proust
Increasingly, we all find ourselves photographing at locations where many have photographed before us. When I encounter this I ask myself many questions. Here are a few.
What’s been done before?
What made it work?
How could it be improved?
What hasn’t been done before?
How have things changed since that work was done?
What could be done to reflect that change?
What’s unique about this moment?
What’s special about my perspective?
How many ways could these things be made clear and/or strongly felt?
The right set of questions can help generate many ideas as well as guide and focus work.
I usually have so many thoughts and feelings that I need to make notes to catch them all. Trying to find the best words to express them with makes my understanding of them clearer.
Next time you find yourself in familiar territory, I recommend you start asking many useful questions.
Find more ways to boost your creativity using words.
Learn more creative techniques in my workshops.
These are two book covers for projects I’m currently developing.
I create visual reminders for projects I’m currently working on. Then I place them in my working environment. They constantly prompt me to consider the work I’m developing at many times and in many moods. I sleep on it. I collect sketches and notes. I plan trips to make new exposures and list what I kind of material I’m looking for. I assemble relevant finished images in the series. I look for connections between images currently being made and images made in the past. I list many ways to develop the work.
What projects are you developing?
What kinds of visual reminders would be helpful to you?
What other things can you do to develop the work you want to do right now?
Read more about project development here.
Find more resources about developing your personal vision here.
Learn more in my digital photography workshops.
As a fine artist, I advance my career with personal projects. Personal projects also create a clearer direction for and develop greater meaning in my life. My life would be unfulfilled without them
You don’t need to have a fine art career to benefit from personal projects. Many commercial photographers find personal projects reenergize them, add purpose to their lives and quite often lead to new assignments or whole new streams of income. Many amateurs, making images purely for the love of doing it, find greater satisfaction and personal growth through personal projects.
As an artist who mentors other artists in workshops and seminars, I’ve often been called to speak about the importance of personal projects; how to find them, start them, develop them, complete them, present them, and promote them.
Here’s an overview of what I share.
Personal Projects
Defining a project is one of the single best ways to develop your body of work. When you define a project you focus, set goals, set quotas, set timelines, create a useful structure for your images, collect accompanying materials, and polish the presentation of your efforts so that they will be well received.
Focusing your efforts into a project will help you produce a useful product. A project gives your work a definite, presentable structure. A finished project makes work more useful and accessible. Once your project is done, your work will have a significantly greater likelihood of seeing the light of day. Who knows, public acclaim may follow. Come what may, your satisfaction is guaranteed …
Read the rest on scottkelby.com.
Learn more in these related digital photography ebooks.
Develop your personal project in my digital photography workshops.
My TEDx Dirigo talk from 10/10/10 is live.
In You’re More Creative Than You Think You Are I show how you can create a synergy between skills you already have (writing, drawing, photography) to turbo charge your creativity.
Watch the other TEDx Dirigo speakers here.
Learn more about TEDx Dirigo here.
Find more of my favorite TED videos here.
How do I find inspiration?
Let me count my ways.
1 Walk in nature
2 Visit a new place
3 Plan a future trip
4 Read
5 Listen to music
6 Watch movies
7 Look at artwork
8 Review my finished images
9 Review my unfinished images
10 Make new images spontaneously
11 List new creative things to try
12 Try something new creatively
13 Sketch ideas
14 Free associate
15 Brainstorm
16 Meditate
17 Daydream
18 Dream
19 Play like/with a child
How do you find inspiration?
The next time that doesn’t work, try one (or more) of these things.
I recommend you practice some or all of these things regularly.
Don’t wait to run dry.
Keep yourself overflowing all the time.
Find more resources on Creativity here.
Learn more in my digital photography workshops.
Recently, I spoke with Scott Sheppard on NIK Radio. Scott wanted to talk about how to avoid “Photographic A.D.D.”. He asked, “So what do you do?” I replied, “You have two choices. You can spray and pray. Or, you can look before you leap.” I elaborate in our wide ranging discussion on how to focus your creative vision.
Listen to our conversation on NIK Radio.
Find more audio inspiration on my website.
Learn more about creativity in my digital photography workshops.