The Essential Collection Of Creativity Videos

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This growing collection of videos on creativity includes content from many fields – photographers, writers, musicians, scientists and kids. Use this list to dive into what I think is the most fascinating field. Check back in the future for new additions to this list.
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With so many great videos to choose from where do you start?
My top picks are red.
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View The Essential Collection Of Creativity Quotes here.

The Essential Collection Of Creativity Quotes

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Your sure to find inspiration in this growing list of Creativity Quotes collections. You’ll find great thoughts from many cultures, eras, and disciplines in these collections. Click on this list of links to explore quotes by topic. Check back in the future for new additions to this list.
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Find more quotes daily in my Twitter and Facebook streams.
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20 Quotes By Photographer Robert Adams

 
Here’s a collection of my favorite quotes by photographer Robert Adams.
“Henry James proposed asking of art three modest and appropriate questions: What is the artist trying to do? Does he do it? Was it worth doing?” – Robert Adams
“The history of art is filled with people who did not live long enough to enjoy a sympathetic public, and their misery argues that criticism should try to speed justice.” – Robert Adams
“Philosophy can forsake too easily the details of experience… many writers and painters have demonstrated that thinking long about what art is or ought to be ruins the power to write or paint.” – Robert Adams
“C.S. Lewis admitted, when he was asked to set forth his beliefs, that he never felt less sure of them than when he tried to speak of them. Photographers know this frailty. To them words are a pallid, diffuse way of describing and celebrating what matters. Their gift is to see what will be affecting as a print. Mute. ” ― Robert Adams
“Part of the difficulty in trying to be both an artist and a businessperson is this: You make a picture because you have seen something beyond price; then you are to turn and assign to your record of it a cash value. If the selling is not necessarily a contradiction of the truth in the picture, it is so close to being a contradiction—and the truth is always in shades of gray–that you are worn down by the threat.” – Robert Adams
“Your own photography is never enough. Every photographer who has lasted has depended on other peoples pictures too – photographs that may be public or private, serious or funny but that carry with them a reminder of community.” – Robert Adams
“…the only things that distinguish the photographer from everybody else are his pictures: they alone are the basis for our special interest in him. If pictures cannot be understood without knowing details of the artist’s private life, then that is a reason for faulting them; major art, by definition, can stand independent of its maker.” – Robert Adams
“How can we hope, after all, to see a tree or rock or clear north sky if we do not adopt a little of their mode of life, a little of their time? …if the time it takes to cross space is a way by which we define it, then to arrive at a view of space “in no time” is to have denied its reality…” ― Robert Adams
“If as individuals we can improve the geography only slightly, if at all, perhaps the more appropriately scaled subject for reshaping is ourselves.” ― Robert Adams
“I have asked students at the beginning of their careers, what things of that sort might haunt them – what things they must photograph, things they have to try to shoot even before they master the intricacies of making dye transfer prints.” – Robert Adams
“At our best and most fortunate we make pictures because of what stands before our camera, to honor what is greater and more interesting than we are. We never accomplish this perfectly, though in return we are given something perfect–a sense of inclusion. Our subject thus redefines us, and is part of the biography by which we want to be known.” – Robert Adams
“One does not for long wrestle a view camera in the wind and heat and cold just to illustrate a philosophy. The thing that keeps you scrambling over the rocks, risking snakes, and swatting at the flies is the view. It is only your enjoyment of and commitment to what you see, not to what you rationally understand, that balances the otherwise absurd investment of labor.” – Robert Adams
“No place is boring, if you’ve had a good night’s sleep and have a pocket full of unexposed film.” – Robert Adams
“The job of the photographer, in my view, is not to catalogue indisputable fact but to try to be coherent about intuition and hope.” – Robert Adams
“By Interstate 70: a dog skeleton, a vacuum cleaner, TV dinners, a doll, a pie, rolls of carpet….Later, next to the South Platte River: algae, broken concrete, jet contrails, the smell of crude oil…. What I hope to document, though not at the expense of surface detail, is the form that underlies this apparent chaos.” – Robert Adams
“Why is Form beautiful? Because, I think, it helps us confront our worst fear, the suspicion that life may be chaos and that therefore our suffering is without meaning.” – Robert Adams
“The word beauty is unavoidable … it accounts for my decision to photograph … There appeared a quality, beauty seemed the only appropriate word for it, in certain photographs, and I am compelled to live with the vocabulary of this new sight … through over many years [I] still find it embarrassing to use the word beauty, I fear I will be attacked for it, but I still believe in it.” – Robert Adams
“Why do most great pictures look uncontrived? Why do photographers bother with the deception, especially since it so often requires the hardest work of all? The answer is, I think, that the deception is necessary if the goal of art is to be reached: only pictures that look as if they had been easily made can convincingly suggest that beauty is commonplace.” – Robert Adams
“What we hope for from the artist is help in discovering the significance of a place. In this sense we would choose in most respects for thirty minutes with Edward Hopper’s painting Sunday Morning to thirty minutes on the street that was his subject; with Hopper’s vision we see more.” – Robert Adams
“Silence is, after all, the context for the deepest appreciation of art: the only important evaluations are finally, personal, interior ones.” – Robert Adams
Read more photographer’s quotes here.
View photographer’s videos here. 

Ray Bradbury On Creativity – 3 Videos


Host James Day speaks with Ray Bradbury about his career, the importance of fantasizing, his aspirations as a young child, his dislike of college for a writer, his idea of thinking compared to really living, and his love of the library.

Science fiction author Ray Bradbury regales his audience with stories about his life and love of writing in “Telling the Truth,” the keynote address of The Sixth Annual Writer’s Symposium by the Sea, sponsored by Point Loma Nazarene University. Series: Writer’s Symposium By The Sea

Author Ray Bradbury joins Dean Nelson of Point Loma Nazarene University for a talk about his craft as part of Point Loma Nazarene University’s Writer’s Symposium by the Sea. Series: “Writer’s Symposium By The Sea”
View more Creativity Videos here.
Read more Creativity Quotes here.

Alumnus Michael Quinn On Being Discovered


Recently I got “Discovered”. I awoke one morning to 3 emails all from strangers. The Huffington Post, UK SWNS and the UK Hot Spot Media. They were all wanting the work that I had published on the Adobe Behance website called “Greenland Reflections”. I had published several images from my trip to Greenland in 2012 as I was preparing for my return trip in 2013. I wanted to see what was working and what was missing so that I could more fully flush out a body of work. Well a blogger found me and posted my work on My Modern Met that got noticed.
This would not have happened if not for two key events. Since I began this journey in 2010 I have been working extremely hard on my vision and my mechanics. John Paul has been there on so many occasions to feed my imagination. To coach me and then to set me on my own path. There has been a lot of help freely given by the Next Step group over the years. In person, from the website and over emails. The group is so diverse in their own visions and mechanics that it allowed me to dream. To dream bigger than I ever thought I could.
The second event is sharing. You have to share your work to some degree to get noticed. I’m using Behance, Google+, Facebook and more recently Dropr. I generally only post images on Google+ and then post a link to that on my Facebook feed. You need to put your work out there for people to find. There is of course the downside to sharing as well. But you have to just take the risk and get yourself out there.
I have been trying to write something to accompany the images that I post. It generally has to have a theme that the image pairs well with. I think that sharing your thoughts along with your vision makes the work somehow more personal, more intimate, more intriguing. I think that it allows the audience to connect with me on some level.
In summary – Dream big, really Big. Then work hard to get there. Then allow your work to be seen. Allow yourself to be known.
Learn more about Michael and see more of his work here.

PHOTOGRAPH eMagazine – Issue 7

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PHOTOGRAPH 7 is out. This issue showcases portfolios from David Baker (Sea Fever), Michelle Morris Denniston, Mitchell Kanashkevich (Vanuatu), and Dave Morrow (nightscapes). The featured article is from Bret Edge, and the usual columnists are here, including Bruce Percy’s Natural Light column including a new column by Guy Tal.
In my column Creative Composition I discuss Pattern.
Here’s an excerpt.
“Many of the mysteries of the universe have been discovered by recognizing and describing patterns. The Golden Section/Ratio (8:5), the Fibonacci Series (1,2,3,5,8,13,21, etc), and the Mandelbrot Set (a shape characterized by repetitions of self-similar forms at all scales) are three examples of patterns that have been used for many different purposes – scientific, industrial, architectural, aesthetic, etc. Discover the type of repetition or change associated with a pattern and you too will unlock the key to understanding it – and possibly a universal principle.
People are pattern seeking / making animals. Even when patterns are absent, we experience them through our own projections. Making images is all about sensing and creating patterns. The same could be said of making any form of art – including life. Life itself follows patterns. You can make your images livelier by using the power of pattern; the clearer you make the pattern, the stronger the image. Increase your powers of pattern recognition and you’ll increase your visual versatility. Increase your sensitivity the unique qualities of each pattern as well as its differences from other patterns and you’ll increase the depth of your expression.
The modernist painter Josef Albers said, “A pattern is interesting. A pattern interrupted is more interesting.” Interrupting a pattern is a visual strategy that tends to produce strongly organized yet dramatic images. The pattern provides the organization. The interruption provides the drama. The pattern makes the images easily grasped, setting up expectations that are reversed by the interruption, like an unexpected plot twist in a story. An interesting distinction can be made between two different kinds of interruption; accents simply interrupt patterns; counterpoints not only interrupt patterns but they do so in ways that contrast with either the pattern or the main message of an image; both accents and counterpoints often become the new focus of the image.
Once you start seeing patterns you won’t be able to stop – and neither will anybody else. Understand the patterns you are naturally drawn to and you’ll better understand your visual voice and creative intentions – and if you make those patterns clear to others they will too. Because pattern is so powerful, it doesn’t take much; some artists have spent a lifetime exploring just one of these universal, organizing principles. Of course, you’re not limited to one pattern and there are so many to choose from. Simply use the power of pattern in your images and you’ll make your images more powerful.”
There’s more similar content in this and every issue of PHOTOGRAPH.
Download PHOTOGRAPH 7 here.

22 Quotes By Photographer Alfred Eisenstaedt

 
Here’s a collection of my favorite quotes by photographer Alfred Eisenstaedt.
“All photographers have to do, is find and catch the story-telling moment.” – Alfred Eisenstaedt
“It’s important to understand it’s OK to control the subject. If most editorial stories were photographed just as they are, editors would end up throwing most in the waste basket. You have to work hard at making an editorial picture. You need to re-stage things, rearrange things so that they work for the story, with truth and without lying.” – Alfred Eisenstaedt
“I have to be as much diplomat as a photographer.” – Alfred Eisenstaedt
“In a photograph a person’s eyes tell much, sometimes they tell all.” – Alfred Eisenstaedt
“It’s more important to click with people than to click the shutter.” – Alfred Eisenstaedt
“I don’t like to work with assistants. I’m already one too many; the camera alone would be enough.” – Alfred Eisenstaedt
“My style hasn’t changed much in all these sixty years. I still use, most of the time, existing light and try not to push people around. I have to be as much a diplomat as a photographer. People don’t often take me seriously because I carry so little equipment and make so little fuss… I never carried a lot of equipment. My motto has always been, “Keep it simple.” – Alfred Eisenstaedt
“With photography, everything is in the eye and these days I feel young photographers are missing the point a bit. People always ask about cameras but it doesn’t matter what camera you have. You can have the most modern camera in the world but if you don’t have an eye, the camera is worthless. Young people know more about modern cameras and lighting than I do. When I started out in photography I didn’t own an exposure meter – I couldn’t , they didn’t exist! I had to guess.” – Alfred Eisenstaedt
“I don’t use an exposure meter. My personal advice is: Spend the money you would put into such an instrument for film. Buy yards of film, miles of it. Buy all the film you can get your hands on. And then experiment with it.That is the only way to be successful in photography. Test, try, experiment, feel your way along. It is the experience, not technique, which counts in camera work first of all. If you get the feel of photography, you can take fifteen pictures while one of your opponents is trying out his exposure meter.” – Alfred Eisenstaedt
“Today’s photographers think differently. Many can’t see real light anymore. They think only in terms of strobe – sure, it all looks beautiful but it’s not really seeing. If you have the eyes to see it, the nuances of light are already there on the subject’s face. If your thinking is confined to strobe light sources, your palette becomes very mean – which is the reason I photograph only in available light.” – Alfred Eisenstaedt
“I always prefer photographing in available light – or Rembrandt-light I like to call it – so you get the natural modulations of the face. It makes a more alive, real, and flattering portrait.” – Alfred Eisenstaedt
“Once the amateur’s naive approach and humble willingness to learn fades away, the creative spirit of good photography dies with it. Every professional should remain always in his heart an amateur.” – Alfred Eisenstaedt
“When I have a camera in my hand, I know no fear.” – Alfred Eisenstaedt
“I enjoy traveling and recording far-away places and people with my camera. But I also find it wonderfully rewarding to see what I can discover outside my own window. You only need to study the scene with the eyes of a photographer.” – Alfred Eisenstaedt
“People will never understand the patience a photographer requires to make a great photograph, all they see is the end result. I can stand in front of a leaf with a dew drop, or a rain drop, and stay there for ages just waiting for the right moment. Sure, people think I’m crazy, but who cares? I see more than they do!” – Alfred Eisenstaedt
“We are only beginning to learn what to say in a photograph. The world we live in is a succession of fleeting moments, any one of which might say something significant.” – Alfred Eisenstaedt
“The way I would describe a pictorial is that it is a picture that makes everybody say ‘Aaaaah,’ with five vowels when they see it. It is something you would like to hang on the wall. The french word ‘photogenique’ defines it better than anything in English. It is a picture which must have quality, drama, and it must, in addition, be as good technically as you can possible make it.” – Alfred Eisenstaedt
“I seldom think when I take a picture. My eyes and fingers react – click. But first, it’s most important to decide on the angle at which your photograph is to be taken.” – Alfred Eisenstaedt
“The important thing is not the camera but the eye.” – Alfred Eisenstaedt
“I dream that someday the step between my mind and my finger will no longer be needed. And that simply by blinking my eyes, I shall make pictures. Then, I think, I shall really have become a photographer.” – Alfred Eisenstaedt
“Yes, I sold buttons to earn living. But I took pictures to keep on living. Pictures are my life – as necessary as eating or breathing.” – Alfred Eisenstaedt
“Retire? Retire from What? Life? I will only retire when I am dead!” – Alfred Eisenstaedt
Read more Quotes By Photographers here.
View Videos On Photographers here.
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