Sepia Town lets you view and share thousands of mapped historical images from around the globe.
You can even upload your own vintage images and share your history.
Explore Sepia Town here.
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“Lightroom 5 has a great new non-circular spot removing/healing brush. However, there’s a feature that many will overlook for using the tool for what it was originally intended for. It’s always been great at removing dust spots from dirt on your lens or sensor dust as long as you could see the spots in your images. Now with the new Visualize Spots feature you can find them much easier.”
This new feature is included in ACR / Photoshop CC too.
View more on Terry White’s blog.
Learn more in my digital photography and digital printing workshops.
Bring On The Learning Revolution ! – Sir Ken Robinson on TED
Schools Kill Creativity – Sir Ken Robinson on TED
“Sir Ken Robinson makes an entertaining and profoundly moving case for creating an education system that nurtures (rather than undermines) creativity. He challenges the way we’re educating our children. He champions a radical rethink of our school systems, to cultivate creativity and acknowledge multiple types of intelligence.”
10 Talks On Education – Curated By Sir Ken Robinson
View more videos on Creativity here.
Here’s a collection of my favorite quotes on creativity.
“Creativity is contagious, pass it on” – Albert Einstein
“You can’t use up creativity. The more you use, the more you have.” — Maya Angelou
” Creativity is the quality that you bring to the activity that you are doing. It is an attitude, an inner approach – how you look at things . . . Whatsoever you do, if you do it joyfully, if you do it lovingly, if your act of doing is not purely economical, then it is creative.” – Osho
” Creativity is the quality that you bring to the activity that you are doing. It is an attitude, an inner approach – how you look at things …” – Osho
”Conditions for creativity are to be puzzled; to concentrate; to accept conflict and tension; to be born everyday; to feel a sense of self.” — Erich Fromm
“Creativity is inventing, experimenting, growing, taking risks, breaking rules, making mistakes, and having fun.” — Mary Lou Cook
“Creativity is just connecting things.” — Steve Jobs
“Creativity comes from a conflict of ideas” – Donatella Versace
“If you want creative workers, give them enough time to play.” — John Cleese
“Creativity is a drug I cannot live without.” – Cecil B. DeMille
“Clean out a corner of your mind and creativity will instantly fill it.” — Dee Hock
“Don’t think. Thinking is the enemy of creativity. It’s self-conscious, and anything self-conscious is lousy. You can’t try to do things. You simply must do things” – Ray Bradbury
“Perspiration is the best form of differentiation, especially in the creative world.” — Scott Belsky
“Creativity isn’t about wild talent as much as it’s about productivity. To find new ideas that work, you need to try a lot that don’t. It’s a pure numbers game.” — Robert Sutton
“To live a creative life, we must lose our fear of being wrong.” — Joseph Chilton Pierce
“The essential part of creativity is not being afraid to fail.” — Edwin H. Land
“The creative person is willing to live with ambiguity. He doesn’t need problems solved immediately and can afford to wait for the right ideas.” — Abe Tannenbaum
“The uncreative mind can spot wrong answers, but it takes a creative mind to spot wrong questions.” — Antony Jay
“The chief enemy of creativity is ‘good’ sense.” — Pablo Picasso
“Creativity is the sudden cessation of stupidity.” — Edwin H. Land
“Creativity involves breaking out of established patterns in order to look at things in a different way.” — Edward de Bono
“A truly creative person rids him or herself of all self-imposed limitations.” — Gerald G. Jampolsky
“Thereʼs no correlation between creativity and equipment ownership.” — Hugh MacLeod
“As competition intensifies, the need for creative thinking increases. It is no longer enough to do the same thing better . . . no longer enough to be efficient and solve problems” — Edward de Bono
“There is no doubt that creativity is the most important human resource of all. Without creativity, there would be no progress, and we would be forever repeating the same patterns.” — Edward de Bono
“Creativity is thinking up new things. Innovation is doing new things.” — Theodore Levitt
Find more Creativity Quotes here.
Discover more quotes daily in my Twitter and Facebook streams
Kim Weston shares insights from his life in the arts steeped in the history of black and white photography.
Read more in my black and white resources.
Learn more in my Black & White Mastery digital printing workshop.
John Sexton shares insights from his distinguished career in black and white photography.
View more in my conversation with John Sexton.
Read more in my black and white resources.
Learn more in my Black & White Mastery digital printing workshop.
Dan Steinhardt and Tony Corbell discuss their black and white workflows from input to output.
Read more in my black and white resources.
Learn more in my Black & White Mastery digital printing workshop.
Suffusion I, Palm Beach, Florida 2001
Sometimes ideas just seem to come out of nowhere. But do they?
We have so many experiences everyday, whether commonplace and routine or extraordinary and novel, it’s hard to say what registers as significant or even important. We’re influenced by so many things – our history, environment, community, actions, etc – that it’s hard to know when one thing leads to another. Often we refashion these materials, sometimes combining them, into something new, so when the resurface it’s not easy to recognize where they came from. What do we connect with? When do we connect with it? Do we know when it happens? Only if we’re mindful.
Awareness of what influences us is something that we can develop. To do this we need to develop a greater sensitivity to our environment and history in it (both personal and cultural) as well as to our actions and attitudes in relation to the activities and tone of our communities. Inquisitiveness is all you need. Ask a lot of questions. Don’t assume you know the answers. Don’t judge yourself or the answers you find along the way. Just collect information. By becoming aware of your influences you’ll be less controlled by them, see more options, and so have more and make clearer choices. Journalling can be an excellent way to develop this discipline and to reflect further on your influences while you’re making new or reviewing old entries. Once you experience the many benefits awareness of your influences brings, you’ll want to cultivate this habit. It can be a source of clarity, of personal insight, and even of purpose. Time and time again, this has been true for me.
Sometimes the insights awareness brings are surprising. One day, after Suffusion I had been hanging on my studio wall for months, I moved a snapshot of my grandmother’s ashes in the ocean (I had been unable to attend her funeral so I kept the photograph my father brought me close for a time.) across my studio. As soon as I saw the two images simultaneously in my field of vision the similarities and connections between them became clear. Since I made it, I had been trying to understand Suffusion I better. I knew some of the undercurrents at work in it; growing concerns about climate change and global warming; the ever-changing nature of existence and perception; watching smoke as a form of meditation; using smoke as a form of prayer. But I hadn’t guessed that it had anything to do with death and cremation. It would be a mistake to say this image – and the other images like it in this series – was about death. It/they are about much, much more. That’s part of what makes them so good. They’re complex.
You might be tempted to say that the influences were simple. The environmental and temporal factors were obvious. A good friend (Timothy Morrissey) had shown me how he photographed smoke and mist in his studio and I made exposures with him. The next day we went fishing and I made more exposures. Much later, I combined images from the two days. But that wouldn’t have explained why I chose to do this; I could have chosen one of thousands of other exposures from other years. Nor would that explain that I liked the results enough to print, frame, and exhibit the results. There was more going on in this image than first met the eye. I knew this, which is why I was still curious about it – and it probably has something to do with why others are curious about it too. I’m still curious. Our best work gets ahead of us and it takes time to catch up to it. Sometimes it continues to reward us for years to come – or even a lifetime.
Questions
How many things influence you?
How many things can you do to increase your awareness of what influences you?
What are the best ways to track your influences?
What benefits do you find from looking back on how your influences develop, flow, and grow?
Can you use the insights about your past reactions to inspire new actions?
How many ways can you proactively influence your influences?
Find out more about this image here.
View more related images here.
Read more The Stories Behind The Images here.
Read more about Influences here.
I had an intense session at Point Lobos, California recently. I was in an emotional state, reviewing the past, connecting ideas, letting some things go. That quality got into these images. Sure, I was working at understanding composition better, but I think it’s the emotional quality that makes these images strong. It was a great reminder of how important it is to be present (really truly present) when you’re making art.
Half these images won’t make the final cut. And I’ll want to return to this subject (if not location) to develop this set further. And yet, there are a few real keepers here, not just single images but also a whole new set of images.
Find out about my Point Lobos / Big Sur workshop here.
National Geographic profiles explorers including James Nachtwey and Paul Nicklen in these short video clips.
Find more National Geographic explorer’s stories here.
View more Videos On Photographers here.
Read conversations with photographers here.
