Elizabeth Gilbert on TED – Nurturing Creativity

August 31, 2009 | 1 Comment

Elizabeth Gilbert (author of Eat, Pray, Love) shares her thoughts in this wonderful talk on creative inspiration. Ole! (You’ll understand this after you watch the video.) Our attitudes about what creativity is and where inspiration comes from are key factors in how we live our creative lives. Many of our concepts are inherited. Are our legacies serving us and others well?

The ancient Greeks and Romans thought that inspiration came from a divine spirit (daemon). Genius (related to the Arabic djinn or genie) was a spirit located outside the individual. Inspire means to breathe in. During the Renaissance western culture championed the individual. Genius was a unique individual with extraordinary talents. Individuals discovered and shared their unique creations through a still mysterious but ultimately rational process. Which perspective is right?

Here’s my take on the subject. They’re both right. And there’s more.

I believe people can channel (come in contact with and give expression to) universal forces and information greater than themselves. I also believe each individual has unique resources, talents, passions, and perspectives that they can use when creating. Furthermore, I believe there are collective human resources that are created by communities (as small as two and as large as the global population) that can be activated through collaboration – either passive, remote, and asynchronous or active, direct, and synchronous. (The web and social networks are providing new means and levels of access for this type of consciousness and interaction.)

I believe these are all different types of consciousness. I believe every individual can access all of these types of consciousness. The challenge is to become more aware of them; not only subconsciously and not just intellectually but holistically; all types of intelligence apply. Any acts of creation attain an energetic presence through alignment with any of these forces. The more alignment, the more energy, the more flow, the more profound the work. Combine multiple resources together for more energy and greater perspective. Direct experience, synchronicity, and clear perspective act as intensifiers.

What do you think?
How does that affect you, your self-image, your creative life, the things you produce, and the way you share them?
Comment here!

Find more Creativity resources here.

Category: Creativity, Video
Tags: daemon, demon, djinn, Eat Pray Love, Elizabeth Gilbert, genie, genious, Greeks, Inspiration, nurturing creativity, Renniassance, Romans, sources of inspiration, TED

Frans Lanting – Life

August 30, 2009 | 1 Comment

Frans Lanting presents The LIFE Project, a poetic collection of photographs that tell the story of our planet, from its eruptive beginnings to its present diversity. Soundtrack by Philip Glass.

Category: Video
Tags: frans lanting, LIFE, TED

Oriens I

August 29, 2009 | Leave a Comment

“Oriens represents a new line of inquiry for me. Take the most compelling passages of changing light throughout an extended duration of time and weave them into a single composition … Neither method, resynchronization or recontextualization, yields a classically objective document. But the results of either application may yield artifacts that are truer to our experience of events. In one respect these represent the events more faithfully — they encompass the passage of time.”

Read the rest of this Statement here.

Category: Images, Statements
Tags: death valley, oriens, painting with light, resynchronizing light

Be More Childlike – Get Lots of Ideas

August 28, 2009 | Leave a Comment

Kids have the craziest ideas.
Maybe it’s because they have a lot of ideas.
We’ve all been there before.
We can be there again.
Idea generation is a natural ability that anyone can develop.

Find more on Creativity here.

Category: Creativity
Tags: children, ideas, kids

Be More Childlike – Treat Things As If They’re Alive

August 27, 2009 | Leave a Comment

Kids animate the world.

Can treating all of your subjects as living things make your relationship to them more interesting?

Can this make your images more interesting?

How many ways can you think of to do this?

Find more on Creativity here.

Category: Creativity
Tags: animating things, children, kids

Be More Childlike – Put Your Camera in Unusual Places

August 26, 2009 | Leave a Comment

Portraits underwater anyone?
Everyone laughs a lot! Sometimes while underwater …
Kids do the craziest things! Do you?

Find more on Creativity here.

Category: Creativity
Tags: children, kids, underwater photography

Be More Childlike – Go Your Own Way

August 25, 2009 | 2 Comments

You know those stories your parents tell about you when you were a kid? They tell them so often you build up synthetic memories as you revisit them over and over again. My father often tells this story about me. “I knew the kid would be alright the day he came back from school with two drawings. ‘Look what the teacher made me do.’ Blue sky, green grass. ‘Now look what I did.’ Orange sky, purple grass.” Yesterday I asked my son “Do you want realistic or solarized color?” “Messed up!” was his response.

As adults, how often do we allow ourselves such creative freedom?

Find more on Creativity here.

Category: Creativity
Tags: children, kids, synthetic color

Be More Childlike – Spend Time with Children

August 24, 2009 | Leave a Comment

Start with …
1 kid
1 adult
1 camera
1 copy of Photoshop

Walk.
Talk.
Expose.
Talk.
Download.
Talk.
Review.
Talk.

Mix …
3 Trash Cans
1 Tower
1 Olive Grove
Talk.

Get …
What’s on your kid’s mind.
Robots anyone?

It can be challenging to be spontaneous with your primary creative medium.
Try enlisting a little help.
Want to be more childlike?
Spend more time with children.

Find more on Creativity here.

Category: Creativity
Tags: children, kids