Austin Kleon followed the success of his first book Newspaper Blackout with another Steal Like An Artist: 10 Things Nobody Told You About Being An Artist. You can find out more about his thoughts on creativity in these two talks. The first at TED is the short form; the second at Google is expanded.
View more on Newspaper Blackout here.
Find out more about Austin Kleon here.
Sometimes those little extra touches make all the difference in the world.
On my first voyage to Antarctica, I was thunderstruck by its immensity. The vast untouched silent spaces were overwhelming. It was a supreme challenge to suggest this sense of scale in the comparatively small images I was producing. This was even more challenging in an environment without human figures or man-made objects.
One of the ways I approached this challenge was to make images filled mostly with space and populated by tiny objects. You can create a powerful sense of scale if you can present large things as being tiny without creating a sense of distortion at the same time.
Some objects bring magic with them. Include the sun, moon, or evening star and you’ve added a magic moment. The bigger you make them, the stronger the magic moment becomes, but no matter how small it’s always magic. Did you ever notice how when a tiny figure is included in an immense landscape picture that the images becomes about the person? I’m always amazed at how something that occupies 1% of the total image’s area can make such a difference.
I marvel at how we overlook the dramatic distortions inherent in making small images of very large things, like mountains. On the one hand, this strikes me as funny, in both senses of the word – comical and strange. On the other hand, this is magical; you can hold the earth in your hands. Suspension of disbelief is responsible for much of the magic of looking at realistic images.
Initially, this image was made without the moon, which was added later. The moon makes this image stronger in many ways, taking it up a notch. The moon also changes the nature of this photography. Without the moon, this image can be seen as a literal, historical document. With the moon, this image becomes an aesthetic object with a heightened emotional emphasis; a poem rather than a piece of non-fiction. While both versions hold up, I prefer the version with the moon. I choose which version to show based on what’s appropriate for a given use. For instance, I show the version without the moon in my editorial body of work Antarctica. The same means are not appropriate for all situations.
Questions
What small things could you include to make a big difference?
Which small things make the biggest difference?
Does how you include them increase or decrease the contributions they make?
Is their inclusion appropriate for what you are trying to accomplish?
Find out more about this image here.
View more related images here.
Read more The Stories Behind The Images here.
Here’s a collection of my favorite quotes on photography.
“Photography is the power of observation, not the application of technology.” – Ken Rockwell
“The photographic image … is a message without a code.” – Roland Barthes
“Every photograph is a battle of form versus content. The good ones are on the border of failure.” – Garry Winogrand
“There is nothing worse than a brilliant image of a fuzzy concept.” -Ansel Adams
“When you put four edges around some facts (photographs), you change those facts.” – Garry Winogrand
“The two most engaging powers of a photograph are to make new things familiar and familiar things new.” – William Thackeray
“Photography is a way of feeling, of touching, of loving. What you have caught on film is captured forever… It remembers little things, long after you have forgotten everything.” – Aaron Siskind
“To photograph truthfully and effectively is to see beneath the surfaces and record the qualities of nature and humanity which live or are latent in all things.” – Ansel Adams
“While there is perhaps a province in which the photograph can tell us nothing more than what we see with our own eyes, there is another in which it proves to us how little our eyes permit us to see.” – Dorothea Lange
“Photography is a major force in explaining man to man” – Edward Steichen
“Your photography is a record of your living” – Paul Strand
“There are always two people in every picture: the photographer and the viewer.” – Ansel Adams
“There is only you and your camera. The limitations in your photography are in yourself, for what we see is what we are.”- Ernst Haas
“A great photograph is a full expression of what one feels about what is being photographed in the deepest sense, and is, thereby, a true expression of what one feels about life in its entirety.” – Ansel Adams
“If your pictures aren’t good enough, you’re not close enough.” – Robert Capa
“There is a vast difference between taking a picture and making a photograph.” – Robert Heinecken
“It is the photo that takes you. One must not take photos.” – Henri Cartier-Bresson
“To me, photography is an art of observation. It’s about finding something interesting in an ordinary place… I’ve found it has little to do with the things you see and everything to do with the way you see them.” – Elliott Erwitt
“To me, photography is the simultaneous recognition, in a fraction of a second, of the significance of an event.” – Henri Cartier-Bresson
“Photographers deal in things which are continuously vanishing…” – Henri Cartier Bresson
“Photography takes an instant out of time, altering life by holding it still.” – Dorothea Lange
“It is the artist who is truthful and it is photography which lies, for in reality time does not stop …” – Auguste Rodin
“Photography is truth. The cinema is truth twenty-four times per second.” – Jean-Luc Godard
“People say photographs don’t lie, mine do.” – David LaChapelle
“Photography is just light remembering itself.” – Jerry Uelsmann
“Light makes photography. Embrace light. Admire it. Love it. But above all, know light. Know it for all you are worth, and you will know the key to photography.” – George Eastman
Find more Creativity Quotes here.
Discover more quotes daily in my Twitter and Facebook streams.
Zorana Gee demonstrates new deblurring technology in Adiobe Photoshop.
View more Photoshop videos here.
Learn more in my digital photography and digital printing workshops.
Lightroom 5 Beta is now available! Download it here.
Useful LR5 resources are posted by Adobe, NAPP, and Photoshop Café.
Here’s a list of and links to those resources.
Photoshop.com
LR5 Advanced Healing Brush
LR5 Radial Filter
LR5 Upright
LR5 – Terry White’s Top 5 Features
NAPP Lightroom 5 Launch Center
LR5 Smart Filters
LR5 Cloning Healing
LR5 Spot
LR5 The Radial
LR5 Upright
LR5 Book Changes
LR5 Slideshow
LR5 Tips
Plus, check out this free NAPP PDF and Lightroom eMagazine.
Photoshop Café Lightroom 5 Training Center
LR5 Colin Smith’s Top 10 New Features
LR5 Advanced Healing Brush
LR5 Radial Filter
LR5 Upright Image Correction
LR5 Video Slideshows
Using LR5 is a great way to get familiar with the latest new features. Remember, this free early beta version will expire after the final release. It does not upgrade previous versions. Many changes made with LR5 will not be backwardly compatible. (Word has it that there are issues with Drobo systems, so if you use one exercise caution.)
Learn more in my digital photography and digital printing workshops.
“In this episode of The Complete Picture, Julieanne demonstrates how nesting Smart Objects enables each filter applied to have it’s own unique Smart Filter (layer) masks.”
View more Photoshop videos here.
Learn more in my digital photography and digital printing workshops.
Here’s a collection of my favorite quotes on questions.
“Sometimes questions are more important than answers.” – Nancy Willard
“It is not the answer that enlightens, but the question.” – Decouvertes
“Judge a man by his questions rather than by his answers” – Voltaire
“Asking the right questions takes as much skill as giving the right answers.” – Robert Half
“To be able to ask a question clearly is two-thirds of the way to getting it answered.” – John Ruskin
“If you do not ask the right questions, you do not get the right answers. A question asked in the right way often points to its own answer.” – Edward Hodnett
“Successful people ask better questions, and as a result, they get better answers.” – Tony Robbins
“For true success ask yourself these four questions: Why? Why not? Why not me? Why not now?” – James Allen
“Who questions much, shall learn much, and retain much.” – Francis Bacon
“It is better to know some of the questions than all of the answers.” – James Thurber
“I found I wasn’t asking good enough questions because I assumed I knew something.” – Alan Alda
“The uncreative mind can spot wrong answers, but it takes a very creative mind to spot wrong questions.” – Anthony Jay
“We thought that we had the answers, it was the questions we had wrong.” – Bono
“If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don’t have to worry about answers.” – Thomas Pynchon
“There are no right answers to wrong questions.” – Ursula K Le Guin
“The one who asks questions doesn’t lose his way.” – African Proverb
“Question everything. Learn something. Answer nothing.” – Engineer’s Motto
“The important thing is not to stop questioning.” – Albert Einstein
Find more Creativity Quotes here.
Discover more quotes daily in my Twitter and Facebook streams.
Reflection XVIII, Yellowstone National Park, Montana, 2008
The motivation for the creation of the first image in the series Reflection was to suggest a state of unusual calm by showing clear reflections in waters so calm not a single ripple or distortion could be found. As the body of work developed, a clear progression in the character of what was reflected revealed itself – from calming to clearing to illumination. Initially, I appreciated the first images for their calmness. Later, works began to contain a remarkable simplicity. In time, the photographs became so simple that the pure spaces they described began to reveal how charged with light they were. Finally, at first, only in the byproducts they produced in their environments the sources of light began to reveal themselves. Throughout this progression, a growing intensity builds as the gaze is focused more directly and deeply into the source of illumination. Reflection XVIII represents an important culmination in the development of this body of work. And an important realization. I was surprised that a thing so simple could have such strength and depth.
In my work, sky and water become metaphors for states of mind. Many religious traditions use bodies of water and weather as metaphors for states of mind. Throughout the ages, the world over, skies and water have been used in ritual practices to intuitively reveal what often goes unacknowledged by the conventional mind. If you watch water and sky closely, you’ll understand why. As water grows still, it becomes clearer so you can see more deeply into it and its surface becomes calmer so reflections reveal more fully what’s above it. When the sky clears, you can better see the light in it and as color fades, you can better see the lights behind it. In these states, it’s not clear where one thing begins and another ends. They become calmer, clearer, deeper, fuller, and more connected.
This progression in character happened inside me as well as in the work, perhaps from years of meditation, perhaps from doing the work. It’s rewarding to consider how our inner states are reflected in the things we are attracted to, that we surround ourselves with, and that we create.
Questions
How much can you do with how little?
When is less more?
When is more less?
At what point is it too much?
At what point is it too little?
Here’s a collection of my favorite quotes on stories.
“I story therefore I am.” – Michael Margolis
“The human species thinks in metaphors and learns through stories.” – Mary Catherine Bateson
“We live in story like a fish lives in water. We swim through words and images siphoning story through our minds the way a fish siphons water through its gills. We cannot think without language, we cannot process experience without story.” – Christina Baldwin
“Humans are pattern-seeking story-telling animals, and we are quite adept at telling stories about patterns, whether they exist or not.” – Michael Shermer
“Sometimes reality is too complex. Stories give it form.” – Jean Luc Goddard
“Storytelling reveals meaning without committing the error of defining it.” – Hannah Arendt
“Story is the vehicle we use to make sense of our lives in a world that often defies logic.” – Jim Trelease
“Stories are medicine. They have such power; they do not require that we do, be, act anything – we need only listen.” -Clarisa Pinkola Estes
“This is the sorcery of literature. We are healed by our stories.” – Terry Tempest Williams
“We tell ourselves stories in order to live.” – Joan Didion
“It’s all a question of story. We are in trouble just now because we do not have a good story. We are in between stories. The old story, the account of how the world came to be and how we fit into it, is no longer effective. Yet we have not learned the new story.” – Thomas Berry
“Men often become what they believe themselves to be. If I believe I cannot do something, it makes me incapable of doing it. But when I believe I can, then I acquire the ability to do it even if I didn’t have it in the beginning.” – Mohandas Ghandi
“No matter what you do in your life, what you create, what career you have, whether you have a family or kinds, or make a lot of money … your greatest creation is always going to be the story of your life.” – Jonathan Harris
“If you’re going to have a story, have a big story, or none at all.” – Joseph Campbell
“Australian Aboriginees say that the big stories – the stories worth telling and retelling, the ones in which you may find the meaning of your life – are forever stalking the right teller, sniffing and tracking like predators hunting prey in the bush.” – Robert Moss
“If you don’t know the trees you may be lost in the forest, but if you don’t know the stories you may be lost in life.” – Siberian Elder
“We have to have a version of our own story that we keep telling ourselves that allows us to get up in the morning. This version of yourself is what you sell to yourself. I think it necessarily includes … not looking at certain things. Everybody’s got some blind spot.” – Stephen Soderbergh
“A story is based on what people think is important, so when we live a story, we are telling people around us what we think is important.” ― Donald Miller
“Stories are the secret reservoir of values: change the stories individuals and nations live by and tell themselves, and you change the individuals and nations.” – Ben Okri
“The stories we tell literally make the world. If you want to change the world, you need to change your story. This truth applies to individuals and institutions.” – Michael Margolis
“Great stories agree with our worldview. The best stories don’t teach people anything new. Instead the best stories agree with what the audience already believes and makes the members of the audience feel smart and secure when reminded how right they were in the thirst place.” – Seth Godin
“Those who tell the stories rule the world.” – Hopi Proverb
“Power consists to a large extent in deciding what stories will be told.” ― Carolyn G. Heilbrun
“In seeking truth you have to get both sides of a story.” – Walter Cronkite
“It takes a thousand voices to tell a single story.” – Native American saying
“Until lions have their historians, tales of the hunt shall always glorify the hunter.” – African Proverb
“The most erroneous stories are those we think we know best – and therefore never scrutinize or question.” – Stephen Jay Gould
“Stories have to be told or they die, and when they die, we can’t remember who we are or why we’re here.” – Sue Monk Kidd
“Our stories are the tellers of us. ” – Chris Cleave
“Authors do not choose a story to write, the story chooses us.” – Richard Denney
“If history were taught in the form of stories, it would never be forgotten.” – Rudyard Kipling
“The purpose of a storyteller is not to tell you how to think, but to give you questions to think upon.” – Brandon Sanderson
“Stories…are like prayers. It does not matter when you begin, or when you end, only that you bend a knee and say the words.” ― Catherynne Valente
“The answer is always in the entire story, not a piece of it.” – Jim Harrison
“Storytelling is the most powerful way to put ideas into the world today.” – Robert McKee
“What happens is fact, not truth. Truth is what we think about what happens.” – Robert McKee
“Storytelling may be what most distinguishes social movements from interest groups.” – Marshal Ganz
“Facts don’t persuade, feelings do. And stories are the best way to get at those feelings.” – Tom Asacker
“The destiny of the world is determined less by the battles that are lost and won than by the stories it loves and believes in.” – Harold Goddard
“The life of every man is a diary in which he means to write one story, and writes another; and his humblest hour is when he compares the volume as it is with what he vowed to make it.” – James M. Barrie
“Over the years I have become convinced that we learn best – and change – from hearing stories that strike a chord within us … Those in leadership positions who fail to grasp or use the power of stories risk failure for their companies and for themselves.” – John Kotter
“It is the nature of stories to leave out far more than they include.” – Marion Dane Bauer
“Better the rudest work that tells a story or records a fact, than the richest without meaning.” – John Ruskin
“There is no agony like bearing an untold story inside of you.” – Maya Angelou
“If stories come to you, care for them. And learn to give them away where they are needed. Sometimes a person needs a story more than food to stay alive.” – Barry Lopez
“In the end all we have…are stories and methods of finding and using those stories.” – Roger C. Shank
Find more Creativity Quotes here.
Discover more quotes daily in my Twitter and Facebook streams.
Budh, Goblin Valley, Utah, 1996
I knew instantly that something new had happened when I saw Budh appear on screen. A clear outline had been introduced to the symmetries I was creating, which were previously unbounded, changing planes into volumes. While many of my images have qualities similar to environmental sculpture, this image and the series of images that it started create sculptural forms made from the environment. I didn’t know it then, but it was the beginning of a whole new series. I was working on another series when this happened. This could be a distraction or a breakthrough. So I was faced with an important decision to make, stay the course and finish what I had started, based on previous successes, or pursue a new direction, one I didn’t fully understand but might lead to new successes. Which would be the most rewarding course of action?
I walked away. I weighed my options. Though it might take some time, I could return to the other series later. This new work was unexpectedly fresh and exciting. I had a feeling that if I ignored this call I would not have been able to return to it later with the same intensity. I gave the decision some time. I slept on it. The excitement hadn’t faded. The mystery was still there. So I trusted my instincts. I moved forward and made new images. I continued to hold the question of how long to pursue this line of inquiry, until I had enough repeated successes to know it had legs. After six successes following similar lines, I knew I had made the right choice.
What I didn’t know then is that doing this new work would help me better understand the work I was developing; and much of the work I had already done; and the reason I work at all. Doing this work clarified ways of thinking and feeling that are essential to what I do and why I do it.
The landscape this image was drawn from had a presence. The symmetry more strongly suggested a presence – a living presence, perhaps one with a unique kind of consciousness. Many people see this image and feel as if the landscape is looking back at them – I do too. The working title for this piece Unseen Watcher lead to the final title Budh, the root of the word buddha, which means awake. Treating all of nature as something that is alive is my basic impulse and perhaps primary message of my life’s work. The sacred mindset this attitude brings with it increased awareness of, respect for, gratitude about, and wonder by being a part of it all.
It happens to me time and time again. I find that if I’m open to surprises and trust the process, I discover new things – properly guided, important new things. This is part of what it takes to move beyond conventional thinking and uncover new things about the world around us and as yet unclaimed inner resources.
One of the things I hear repeatedly from other artists is that the work that surprises them most is often the work that satisfies them most and the work that is most highly celebrated. The French writer Andre Gide remarked, “Man cannot discover new oceans unless he has the courage to lose sight of the shore.” The creative process is a process of discovery. You can’t have discovery without the element of surprise. As a defense mechanism we often resist surprise and try to reduce the number of times we are surprised; some surprises can be both unpleasant and unfortunate. Instead, we need to embrace surprise – and the changes it can bring. Surprises can be magical and transformative.
Questions
When is it best to pursue a new direction?
When is it best to stay with your current plan?
What can you do to evaluate the merits of both old and new directions to help you make the best choice?
Find out more about this image here.
View more related images here.
Read more The Stories Behind The Images here.