Insights & Advice On Storytelling – Ira Glass
Ira Glass of “This American Life” talks about the building blocks of a great story.
View more Creativity Videos here.
Read Creativity Quotes here.
Ira Glass of “This American Life” talks about the building blocks of a great story.
View more Creativity Videos here.
Read Creativity Quotes here.
Looking for great books on the history of photography? Browse this collection of my favorites.
Anyone who understand the history of the medium will understand it better and appreciate it more. This is extremely helpful for practicing photographers. (And who isn’t one these days?)
Enjoy!
Find more great books here.
Here’s a collection of quotes by photographer Wynn Bullock.
“At forty-two, I decided to become a photographer because it offered a means of creative thought and action. I didn’t rationalize this, I just felt it intuitively and followed my intuition, which I have never regretted.” – Wynn Bullock
“For me photography has been a profession, an avocation. Now it has become a way of life.” – Wynn Bullock
“I love the medium of photography, for with its unique realism it gives me the power to go beyond conventional ways of seeing and understanding and say, “This is real, too.” – Wynn Bullock
“As sounds in a musical composition can be used not to express physical objects but ideas, emotions, harmonies, rhythmic orders and most any expression of the human mind and spirit, so light can be used visually to express the mind and spirit.” – Wynn Bullock
“When I photograph, what I’m really doing is seeking answers to things.” – Wynn Bullock
“Mysteries lie all around us, even in the most familiar things, waiting only to be perceived.” – Wynn Bullock
“Searching is everything – going beyond what you know. And the test of the search is really in the things themselves, the things you seek to understand. What is important is not what you think about them, but how they enlarge you.” – Wynn Bullock
“I didn’t want to tell the tree or weed what it was. I wanted it to tell me something and through me express its meaning in nature.” – Wynn Bullock
“A thing is not what you say it is or what you photograph it to be or what you paint it to be or what you sculpt it to be. Words, photographs, paintings, and sculptures are symbols of what you see, think, and feel things to be, but they are not the things themselves.” – Wynn Bullock
“What you see is real – but only on the particular level to which you’ve developed your sense of seeing. You can expand your reality by developing new ways of perceiving.” – Wynn Bullock
“The medium of photography can record not only what the eyes see, but that which the mind’s eye sees as well. The camera is not only an extension of the eye, but of the brain. It can see sharper, farther, nearer, slower, faster than the eye. It can see by invisible light. It can see in the past, present, and future. Instead of using the camera only to reproduce objects, I wanted to use it to make what is invisible to the eye, visible.” – Wynn Bullock
“In a photograph, if I am able to evoke not alone a feeling of the reality of the surface physical world but also a feeling of the reality of existence that lies mysteriously and invisibly beneath its surface, I feel I have succeeded. At their best, photographs as symbols not only serve to help illuminate some of the darkness of the unknown, they also serve to lessen the fears that too often accompany the journeys from the known to the unknown.” – Wynn Bullock
“As I became aware that all things have unique spatial and temporal qualities which visually define and relate them, I began to perceive the things I was photographing not as objects but as events. Working to develop my skills of perceiving and symbolizing these event qualities, I discovered the principle of opposites. When, for example, I photographed the smooth, luminous body of a woman behind a dirty cobwebbed window, I found that the qualities of each event were enhanced and the universal forces which they manifested were more powerfully evoked.” – Wynn Bullock
“My pictures are never pre-visualized or planned. I feel strongly that pictures must come from contact with things at the time and place of taking. At such times, I rely on intuitive, perceptual responses to guide me, using reason only after the final print is made to accept or reject the results of my work.” – Wynn Bullock
“What I feel is that the picture-taking process, anyway a greater part of it, is an intuitive thing. You can’t go out and logically plan a picture, but when you come back, reason then takes over and verifies or rejects whatever you’ve done. So that’s why I say that reason and intuition are not in conflict–they strengthen each other.” – Wynn Bullock
“Everything went together perfectly, and this is what I mean by knowing. I didn’t have to analyze anything. I just recognized what was in front of me. All I had to do was set up and take the picture.” – Wynn Bullock
“The urge to create, the urge to photograph, comes in part from the deep desire to live with more integrity, to live more in peace with the world, and possibly to help others to do the same.” – Wynn Bullock
“I feel all things as dynamic events, being, changing, and interacting with each other in space and time even as I photograph them.” – Wynn Bullock
“There is nothing mysterious about space-time. Every speck of matter, every idea, is a space-time event. We cannot experience anything or conceive of anything that exists outside of space-time. Just as experience precedes all awareness and creative expression, the visual language of our photographs should ever more strongly express the fourth dimensional structure of the real world.” – Wynn Bullock
“I now measure my growth as a photographer in terms of the degrees to which I am aware of, have developed my sense of, and have the skills to symbolize visually the four-dimensional structure of the universe.” – Wynn Bullock
“A person is quite different from a tree or rock or stream. By introducing the nude into my pictures, I started perceiving all the things I was photographing in new ways. In contrast or opposition to each other, things became much more significant and interesting, revealing many more qualities than I had ever dreamed of knowing and expressing. By using the nude, I stopped thinking in terms of objects. I was seeing things, instead, as dynamic events, unique in their own beings yet also related and existing together within a universal context of energy and change.” – Wynn Bullock
“For me a nude photograph should be erotic, not devoid of emotion. The body is a sensual thing, sensuality being one of its most beautiful and meaningful qualities.” – Wynn Bullock
“Theoretical scientists who probe the secrets of the universe and philosophers who seek answers to existence, as well as painters such as Paul Klee who find the thoughts of men of science compatible with art, influence me far more than most photographers.” – Wynn Bullock
“I totally disagree with the belief that nature was only made for the use of people. Human beings are not the center of the universe, and, if they are to sustain themselves, it is vitally important for them to be awakened to how closely they are linked with the rest of nature.” – Wynn Bullock
Read more quotes by photographers here.
View documentaries on photographers here.
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Download DPD’s Bucket List here.
When Seth Resnick and I started Digital Photo Destinations workshops we picked locations from our bucket lists – and we still do. We go to the places we feel our lives would be incomplete if we didn’t visit them.
What’s on our bucket list? Climb glaciers and into ice caves above Iceland’s Jokulsarlon; fly helicopters over 1000 foot high coral dunes in Namibia’s Sossusvlei, ride camels in Morocco’s Erg Chagaga; sail through the world’s largest ice fiord in Greenland’s Illulisat; glide in zodiacs through Antarctica’s “Iceberg Graveyard”; drink tea along China’s Li River surrounded by its misty mountains; walk through Shinto garden shrines in Japan’s Kyoto (both in spring bloom and fall color). These are just a few of the things on our bucket list.
What’s on your bucket list? If you don’t have a bucket list use ours to start one; you’ll do more of the things you want to do. If you do have a bucket list, you may decide to add an item or two you see on our bucket list. And, if you find a destination that’s already on your bucket list here, we hope you’ll join us.
Find out about our next Digital Photo Destinations adventures here.
See more in our contact sheets from previous adventures here.
Are you looking for great books on creativity?
Browse this collection of my favorite books on creativity.
Artists, poets, musicians, dancers, and businessmen – they’ve all got important insights to share.
These are some of the books that have changed my life.
One of them might change yours too.
Enjoy!
Find more great books here.
Austin Kleon’s new book Show Your Work offers a treasure trove of tips and insights about effectively sharing the fruits of your creative life. In these two videos he offers more insights.
Learn more about Austin Kleon here.
Find more books on creativity here.
My free July 2014 Desktop Calendar features a new image from Sobranes Point, California.
Download it here.
“Environmental Defense Fund’s mission is to preserve the natural systems on which all life depends.
Guided by science and economics, we find practical and lasting solutions to the most serious environmental problems.
What distinguishes Environmental Defense Fund is the combination of what we protect and how we protect it.
We work to solve the most critical environmental problems facing the planet. This has drawn us to areas that span the biosphere: climate, oceans, ecosystems and health. Since these topics are intertwined, our solutions take a multidisciplinary approach. We work in concert with other organizations — as well as with business, government and communities — and avoid duplicating work already being done effectively by others.”
Here’s a selection of my favorite quotes on invention.
“…to invent is to discover that we know not, and not to recover or resummon that which we already know” — Sir Francis Bacon
“To understand is to invent.” — Jean Piaget
“Inventing is a skill that some people have and some people don’t. But you can learn how to invent.” — Ray Dolby
“I do not think there is any thrill that can go through the human heart like that felt by the inventor as he sees some creation of the brain unfolding to success.” — Nikola Tesla
“Doubt is the father of invention.” – Galileo Galilei
“Want is the mistress of invention” – Susanna Centlivre
“Necessity, the mother of invention” – Richard Franck
“Mothers are the necessity of invention.” – Bill Watterson
“I don’t think necessity is the mother of invention. Invention, in my opinion, arises directly from idleness, possibly also from laziness – to save oneself trouble.” – Agatha Christie
“Name the greatest of all inventors. Accident.” — Mark Twain
“I never did anything worth doing by accident; nor did any of my inventions come by accident; they came by work” – Thomas Alva Edison
“Invention is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration” – Thomas Alva Edison
“Stumbling upon the next great invention in an ‘ah-ha!’ moment is a myth.” – James Dyson
“Human subtlety will never devise an invention more beautiful, more simple or more direct than does nature because in her inventions nothing is lacking, and nothing is superfluous.” – Leonardo da Vinci
“Nature is the source of all true knowledge. She has her own logic, her own laws, she has no effect without cause nor invention without necessity.” – Leonardo DaVinci
“Every science has for its basis a system of principles as fixed and unalterable as those by which the universe is regulated and governed. Man cannot make principles—he can only discover them.” — Thomas Paine
“All creation is a mine, and every man a miner. The whole earth, and all within it, upon it, and round about it, including himself … are the infinitely various “leads” from which, man, from the first, was to dig out his destiny.” — Abraham Lincoln
“To invent, you need a good imagination and a pile of junk.” — Thomas Alva Edison
“Inventing is a combination of brains and materials. The more brains you use, the less material you need.” — Charles F. Kettering
“Invention presupposes imagination but should not be confused with it.” — Igor Stravinsky
“No amount of skillful invention can replace the essential element of imagination.” – Edward Hopper
“Only an inventor knows how to borrow, and every man is or should be an inventor.’ — Ralph Waldo Emerson
“I invent nothing, I rediscover.” – Auguste Rodin
“Invention, strictly speaking, is little more than a new combination of those images which have been previously gathered and deposited in the memory; nothing can come of nothing” – Joshua Reynolds
“I invented nothing new. I simply combined the inventions of others into a car. Had I worked fifty or ten or even five years before, I would have failed.’ — Henry Ford
“Too often we forget that genius, too, depends upon the data within its reach, that even Archimedes could not have devised Edison’s inventions” – Ernest Dimnet
“I’m an inventor. I became interested in long-term trends because an invention has to make sense in the world in which it is finished, not the world in which it is started.” – Ray Kurzweil
“An invention that is quickly accepted will turn out to be a rather trivial alteration of something that has already existed.” — Edwin Herbert Land
“Inventor, n. A person who makes an ingenious arrangement of wheels, levers and springs, and believes it civilization.” — Ambrose Bierce
“Where a new invention promises to be useful, it ought to be tried” – Thomas Jefferson
“The production of too many useful things results in too many useless people.” — Karl Marx
“We believe that if men have the talent to invent new machines that put men out of work, they have the talent to put those men back to work” – John Fitzgerald Kennedy
“It is questionable if all the mechanical inventions yet made have lightened the day’s toil of any human being.” — John Stuart Mill
“In the modern world we have invented ways of speeding up invention, and people’s lives change so fast that a person is born into one kind of world, grows up in another, and by the time his children are growing up, lives in still a different world” – Margaret Mead
“I must create a system, or be enslav’d by another man’s.” — William Blake
“Our inventions mirror our secret wishes.” — Lawrence George Durrell
Find more Creativity Quotes here.
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One of the world’s most influential thinkers Edward de Bono the father of ‘lateral thinking’ shares many insights on creativity.
View more creativity videos here.