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“For the first several years one struggles with the technical challenges…a learning curve and growth process that is rewarding, stimulating and self-renewing. But, eventually every photographer who sticks with it long enough arrives at a technical plateau where production of a technically good photograph is relatively easy. It is here that real photography starts and most photographers quit.” ~ Brooks Jensen
ON MY LAST ENTRY, RE: THE STUPID IDEA OF ADDING GEAR TO MAKE PHOTOGRAPHY MORE INTERESTING, Thomas Rink left a link to a site that, along similar lines, suggested “a photographer’s kit for getting out of a creative rut.”
The writer of that, iMo, cliche-d camera-club advice article wrote that “creativity is the difference between a nice photo and a NICE photo.” That statement was then followed by a description of his “photographer’s creative kit”:
“…using accessories, taking advantage of my camera’s unique menu options, trying different exposure techniques…or simply something I remember another photographer doing well.”
iMo, the conflated idea that “creativity” + the application of craft / technique as a means to becoming “creative” is a thoroughly ignorant misunderstanding of the idea of true creativity as it pertains to the making of pictures. While a learned application of craft / technique employed in the making of a photograph can certainly be a significant element of a finely realized picture making vision, it is the vision itself-the manner in which a picture maker sees the world-that imparts the idea of creativity on the part of the picture maker.
iMo, in other words, a finely realized picture making vision don’t need no indiscriminately applied art sauce-employed under the rubric of “being creative”-to make it “NICE”.
iMo, true creativity in the making of pictures is simply about being creative-thinking outside the box of conventional picture making “wisdom”-about what is suitable as a subject for the making of a photograph and then going about picturing it in the unique / singular manner in which you see it.
“To see something spectacular and recognize it as a photographic possibility is not making a very big leap. But to see something ordinary, something you’d see every day, and recognize it as a photographic possibility, that’s what I am interested in.” ~ Stephen Shore