Learn Julieanne Kost’s top 5 favorite new features in Photoshop including refinements to the Crop Tool, Liquify, nondestructive editing with Blur Gallery and increased efficiency with Conditional Actions, practical default Type Styles and support for Retina displays on Macintosh.
View more Photoshop Videos here.
Learn more in my digital photography and digital printing workshops.
No one needs to learn to “think outside the box” more than photographers. The frame, literally a box, is often our greatest ally. Learning to see photographically is, in part, learning to see within the limits of this box and use them creatively. But there are times when this limits our vision unnecessarily. Once we’ve learned to see within the box, we then also need to learn to see outside the box—and start extending the frame with multiple exposures to perfect select compositions. Extending format techniques aren’t just for panoramic image formats. They can be used to give you the extra inch that can make all the difference in the world for your compositions …
Read more on Digital Photo Pro.
Learn more in my digital photography and digital printing workshops.
“What’s a remix? In Kirby Ferguson’s view, any piece of art that contains a recognizable reference to another work–a quote from a lyric, a borrowed riff, a filmic homage. Which makes almost everything a remix, from a Led Zeppelin song to a classic film from George Lucas. His deeply researched and insanely fun four-part web series, “Everything Is a Remix,” dives into the question: Is remixing a form of creativity, a production of the new on the shoulders of what precedes it, or is it just copying? He comes out firmly on the side of creativity, calling for protections for people who, with good intentions, weave together bits of existing culture into something fresh and relevant.”
Watch more creativity videos here.
Find out more about this image here.
“Life is not a dress rehearsal. Stop practicing what you’re going to do and just go do it. In one bold stroke you can transform today.” – Marilyn Grey
“There are two mistakes one can make along the road to truth — not going all the way, and not starting.” – Buddha
“What is not started today is never finished tomorrow.” – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
“Every new beginning comes from some other beginning’s end.” – Seneca
“Every day is a new beginning. Treat it that way. Stay away from what might have been, and look at what can be.” — Marsha Petrie Sue
“The beginning is the most important part of the work.” – Plato
“Do not wait until the conditions are perfect to begin. Beginning makes the conditions perfect.” – Alan Cohen
“You don’t need endless time and perfect conditions. Do it now. Do it today. Do it for twenty minutes and watch your heart start beating.” – Barbara Sher
“No good ending can be expected in the absence of the right beginning.” – I Ching
“What’s well begun is half done.” – Horace
“Beginnings are only difficult without any action.” — Byron Pulsifer
“The way to get started is to quit talking and begin doing.” – Walt Disney
“You don’t have to be great to start, but you have to start to be great.” — Joe Sabah
“The secret to a rich life is to have more beginnings than endings.” — Dave Weinbaum
“There will come a time when you believe everything is finished. That will be the beginning.” – Louis L’Amour
“A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.” – Lao Tzu
“Take the first step in faith. You don’t have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step.” – Martin Luther King
“Start by doing what’s necessary; then do what’s possible; and suddenly you are doing the impossible.” – St. Francis of Assisi
“The secret to living the life of your dreams is to start living the life of your dreams today, in every little way you possibly can.” – Mike Dooley
Find more Creativity Quotes here.
Read new Creativity Quotes in my Twitter and Facebook streams.
Oriens I, Death Valley, California, 1999
I missed the shot(s) the first time. When I got back from Death Valley, a friend said, “Zabriskie Point? Again? Well, I’ll bet you could photograph it in a way that hasn’t been done before.” I knew what she meant, but her comment actually clarified another idea for me.
I had been deeply impressed by the way the light changed mercurially over time, continually transforming the landscape from pre-dawn through early morning. It first lit the blue-gray sky with pale pinks, then turned the far mountains from a cold brown to a hot coral, crept slowly across the valley floor to set Manley Beacon on fire (the crescendo in a magnificent symphony of light that most photographers favor), and continued to create moving pools of light in the foreground during a process that lasts for more than an hour. It is a wonder to behold and to fully appreciate it, one needs to be still and vigilant for some time. Its full impact cannot be found in a single moment. I found it in many.
The solution? Make multiple exposures of the same composition throughout changing passages of light and then blend them together to create the impression of an extended moment in time.
I had made exposures of sunrise at Zabriskie Point, but I hadn’t made the ones I needed now. I had to go back. It took a year and a half. Knowing that so many unexpected things often happen, I prefer to make flexible plans, so I wondered if I would return for an idea that ultimately wouldn’t work. I envisioned glorious light in every layer of the landscape. As I began making the exposures, I realized there was a flaw in my plan. If I selected the ‘best’ light in every area of the picture, all areas would demand equal attention. There would be no contrast. The final image needed shadow just as much as it needed light. I persisted, making exposures, without moving the camera for more than an hour, of every significant change in light – and shadow. My original plan was useful but it needed to be modified as it was executed based on specific conditions, new information, and insight. To succeed, I had to listen not just what was in my head but also to the place and the process.
Later, as I looked at my transparencies, the final solution presented itself. This new solution even highlighted my feelings about the place more strongly than my original idea. The result, different from my initial conception but consistent with my intention, achieves a dramatic lighting effect never before seen at one time. Yet, throughout time, a similar sequence of experiences has been witnessed countless times by so many.
The light on the foreground is unaltered, or to be more accurate, I should say is faithful to the transparencies that recorded it. The separate portions have not been modified substantially, nor were they modified unequally – there has been no dodging and burning. Instead, the light has been reorchestrated with time, faithfully representing the existing light(s) but changing what can be seen in a single moment.
Nothing in the foreground, midground, or background has been added or removed. The sky, however, is an addition from another location. I found the smaller sliver of sky contained in the original exposures made the composition cramped. It lacked the vast sense of space found in the desert. The sky had in fact, been the first indicator of the presence of the coming light, making a thousand transformations before its arrival. But the sky that morning was not particularly noteworthy. I could have spent a lifetime waiting for the perfect sky. I chose instead to incorporate another sky from another location that supported both the composition and the light. This sky I altered dramatically, both in tone and color. I did so to expressively complement the drama of the light below, to support it and not detract from it. While the lower half of the image is a matter of resynchronization, the upper half is a matter of recontextualization.
Neither method (resynchronization or recontextualization) yields a classically objective document. However, the results of their application may yield artifacts that are truer to our experience of events than traditional photographic practices. If applied in specific ways, they can represent certain aspects of events more faithfully, such as the passage of time.
Making this image changed the way I think about and experience the essential elements of photography – light and time.
How many ways can thinking more predictively about change aid your creativity?
How many new ways can you think about the fundamentals of your medium?
How can planning increase your creative success?
What can you do to encourage your plans to evolve?
My free January Desktop Calendar is available now.
Download it here !
At the end/beginning of every year I make plans for the coming year. Doing this consistently has helped me be more personally fulfilled and professionally productive.
Here are five resources that will help you do this too.
1 Make A Bucket List
Identify the actions that are most important to you.
2 Make Plans
Increase your productivity and fulfillment by making a plan.
3 Define A Project
Focus your creative efforts and create an action list to achieve your goals.
4 Developing Personal Projects
Tips on developing, completing, and releasing your personal projects.
5 Keep Current Projects Visible
Create visual touchstones to help you focus and follow through on projects.
6 Getting Things Done
David Allen wrote the definitive resource on Getting Things Done.
Pay close attention to the section on Mission/Goals/Projects/Actions.
Learn more with my free enews Insights.
“Is your school or workplace divided into “creatives” versus practical people? Yet surely, David Kelley suggests, creativity is not the domain of only a chosen few. Telling stories from his legendary design career and his own life, he offers ways to build the confidence to create.
David Kelley’s company IDEO helped create many icons of the digital generation — but what matters even more to him is unlocking the creative potential of people and organizations to innovate routinely.”
Watch more creativity videos here.
For most of us, when it comes to emotions, our thinking is often unclear. Most of us enjoy positive emotions, often looking to things outside rather than inside of us to produce them more frequently and intensely. Most of us dislike negative emotions, denying or repressing them so quickly we make little time to truly understand how they were produced, what we can learn from them, and how to encourage different responses, ones of our own choosing. Because of the volatile nature of emotions, at one time or another and sometimes habitually, many of us repress emotions in an effort to avoid conflict and maintain control. Unsure of where they come from or how they were produced we simply react to our emotions, thinking that they are natural, thus inevitable, or that something outside us produces them, thus we are not responsible for them. Even though our emotions can be highly subjective and individual we think of them as universally justified and even though they often change quickly we think of our habitual reactions to them as unchangeable.
In reality, we’re responsible for our emotions. They’re our reactions. When we find that we tend to react to certain things in predictable ways we may become more interested in learning more about our emotions. When we find that we can choose our reactions we may become more interested in developing our emotions.
Awareness is the first step to developing your emotions. Becoming more conscious of our emotions helps us to understand them better, to be less controlled by them, to choose our responses to them, and even to work with them to reduce, intensify, or even change them. In time, you may even find you respond to other people’s emotions differently.
Simply observe your emotions – and everything that surrounds them.
If you find it challenging to focus on a specific emotion, try bringing to mind an event that evokes it for you.
Don’t judge or attempt to change your emotions – or yourself.
What words would you use to describe an emotion?
Are your emotional reactions linked to specific events in your life or ideas you hold?
Identify the physical sensations in your body that accompany an emotion for you.
Over time, does an emotion stay the same or change in intensity or quality for you?
Do you stay with or return to one emotion more frequently than others?
Do your emotions follow any predictable patterns?
Let your emotions flow, allowing them to persist, change or fade without intervention.
Observe your emotions as if they are only one part of you. While you’re feeling an emotion, it may help to simply state “I am feeling …” which can help increase your awareness of both your active role in their existence and the transitory nature of your emotions.
Reflection LVIII
Reflection LVII
Illumination VI
Illumination II
Illumination VII
Illumination III
Illumination XVII
Suffusion XV
Suffusion XIX
Suffusion XXVI
Suffusion XXI
Suffusion XX
This is a selection of my top 12 images of all time. This selection doesn’t reflect sales, publication, or activities on the web. It simply reflects my opinion. Click on the titles to find out more about each image.
Geography
These images are drawn from three locations – Bolivia’s Uyuni salt flats, Namibia’s Sossusvlei dune files, and Iceland’s Skogafoss waterfall.
Process
These images were all drawn from three separate hour-long sessions each yielding complete individual portfolios. I used to think I’d be lucky if I got one really good image from a shoot, but after a few experiences where more than one really good image was made from a single subject, I cast aside my limited thinking. Now I ask, “How far can I take this?”
Concepts
All of these images come out of a way of relating to the world (all of it) as parts of a living thing into whose fibers we are deeply woven. In addition to changing organic forms, they all have a strong suggestion of breath.
Magnificent Moment
They’re all nominees for my list of most sublime landscape experiences. While standing silently focused on Iceland’s Skogafoss waterfall was the fulfillment of many years of looking for my own original response to a classic subject, and walking in the clouds reflected on the surface of Bolivia’s Uyuni salt flats was the realization of a long-standing dream, few landscape experiences compare to the hour spent flying over Sossusvlei Namibia’s 1,500 foot high coral dunes after a sustained sandstorm – the experience was so penetrating it took me quite some time to clearly see the new directions and new levels it offered.It’s challenging to choose so few images from so many – but it’s insightful. Try selecting your own top 12 images. Try selecting the top 12 images of your favorite artist(s).
View more of my Annual Top 12 Selections here.