Creative Mastery Robert Greene – Chase Jarvis Live & Google Talk



Robert Greene author of Mastery offers sage advice on finding and pursuing your own creative mastery.
Topics include …
How to discover your passion and pursue it
What Einstein, Da Vinci, Goethe, Napoleon and other “masters” have in common with each other and with you
How each of us have a unique composition that is our greatest asset
Why choosing a career path that leverages your individuality and sparks curiosity is essential
How an apprenticeship is a necessary step toward achieving mastery and fulfillment
View more creativity videos here.
View my TED and Google talks on creativity here.

Seek Feedback – The Story Behind The Image

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Selva Obscura, Jefferson, Maine, 2002

I had no intention of making this image; I had left my ‘real’ medium format film camera home and brought a then new digital DSLR, a technology in its infancy at the time, to photograph a new puppy I was bringing home with my family. The drive through the foggy February forests of Maine was beautiful and late in the day as we neared a series of orchards the light turned golden. I stopped with no thought other than to enjoy the moment, making a series of exposures, before continuing on.
While I liked the images I produced that evening, I had no intention of displaying them, until everyone in my studio strongly urged me to do so. Response to these images has continued to be very positive. This one has become one of my top sellers.
This work didn’t fit neatly into the ideas I’ve been developing in my work for decades. It doesn’t present a view of nature seemingly untouched by man. It’s not a wasteland, either devoid of or filled with water. It’s conventionally clear where the life is, in living organisms, drawing attention away from the idea that there might be a spirit in other kinds of things. It didn’t fit for this and other reasons. Yet it was somehow connected. These images lay down a challenge.
As I was describing this process to my workshop participants one day remarking, “I don’t do trees.” one woman remarked, “I don’t think you can say that any more.” Touche.  The next morning on my way to class as I considered this further, acknowledging that I had always loved orchards, tending them as a boy and now living in another one, and that I deeply appreciated gardens and agricultural areas and sacred sites where man worked in concert with nature, the phrase came to mind, “Perhaps Eden can be restored, if we give it half a chance.” It’s a thought that runs deep inside all of my work. It’s my hope that what I share will kindle a greater sense of wonder for the natural world and inspire people to participant in it creatively and conscientiously.
That was one of a handful of days where the mission behind my life’s work became clearer and this image played a central part in that process. It’s become an important outlier in my body of work, which I’ve learned a great deal from.
In response, I didn’t decide to go in a new direction. I held to my original course, bringing the work I had already begun to completion – now with a renewed sense of purpose.
What you do with feedback is up to you. I recommend that you seek a lot of feedback from a variety of sources. Know the source of the feedback you receive. Don’t forget to give yourself feedback, the most important source of all. Weigh it all carefully, but make the final choice your own. In the end, it’s your choice. It’s your life’s work. It’s your life. Make it count.
Questions
What is good enough? How do you know?
What isn’t good enough? How do you know?
What is too much?
What is perfectly imperfect?

Find out more about this image here.

View more related images here.
Read more The Stories Behind The Images here.

33 Quotes On Discovery

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Here’s a collection of my favorite quotes on discovery.
“There is no better high than discovery.” – E. O. Wilson
“In other studies you go as far as other have gone before you, and there is nothing more to know; but in a scientific pursuit there is continual food for discovery and wonder.” – Mary Shelley, Frankenstein
“Scientists have become the bearers of the torch of discovery in our quest for knowledge.” – Stephen Hawking
“A discovery is said to be an accident meeting a prepared mind.” – Albert Szent-Gyorgyi
“In the discovery of secret things and in the investigation of hidden causes, stronger reasons are obtained from sure experiments and demonstrated arguments than from probable conjectures and the opinions of philosophical speculators of the common sort.” – William Gilbert
“There are two possible outcomes: if the result confirms the hypothesis, then you’ve made a measurement. If the result is contrary to the hypothesis, then you’ve made a discovery.” – Enrico Fermi
“The greatest discoveries have come from people who have looked at a standard situation and seen it differently.” – Ira Erwin
“The more original a discovery, the more obvious it seems afterwards.” – Arthur Koestler
“Scientific discovery and scientific knowledge have been achieved only by those who have gone in pursuit of it without any practical purpose whatsoever in view.” – Max Planck
“The most wonderful discovery made by scientists is science itself.” – Jacob Bronowski
“Man cannot discover new oceans unless he has the courage to lose sight of the shore.” –  André Gide
“They are ill discoverers that think there is no land when they can see nothing but sea.” – Francis Bacon
“The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.” – Marcel Proust
“To see the world for a moment as something rich and strange is the private reward of many a discovery.” – Edward M. Purcell
“Discovery consists of seeing what everybody has seen, and thinking what nobody has thought.” – Albert Szent-Gyorgyi
“Through every rift of discovery some seeming anomaly drops out of the darkness, and falls, as a golden link into the great chain of order.” – Edwin Hubbel Chapin
“The beginning of knowledge is the discovery of something we do not understand.”  Frank Herbert
“No great discovery was ever made without a bold guess.” – Isaac Newton
“The discovery of truth is prevented more effectively, not by the false appearance things present and which mislead into error, not directly by weakness of the reasoning powers, but by preconceived opinion, by prejudice.” – Arthur Schopenhauer
“The secret to discovery is to never believe existing facts.” – Bryant H. McGill
“The greatest obstacle to discovery is not ignorance – it is the illusion of knowledge.” – Daniel J. Boorstin
“Education is a progressive discovery of our own ignorance.” – Will Durant
“The art of teaching is the art of assisting discovery.” – Mark Van Doren
“Our real discoveries come from chaos, from going to the place that looks wrong and stupid and foolish.” – Chuck Palahniuk
“Mistakes are the portals of discovery.” – James Joyce
“He who never made a mistake, never made a discovery.” – Samuel Smiles
“There’ll always be serendipity involved in discovery.” – Jeff Bezos
“One of the advantages of being disorderly is that one is constantly making exciting discoveries.” – A. A. Milne
“The beginning of knowledge is the discovery of something we do not understand.” – Frank Herbert
“If I have ever made any valuable discoveries, it has been owing more to patient attention, than to any other talent.” – Isaac Newton
“There is no harm in doubt and skepticism, for it is through these that new discoveries are made.” – Richard Feynman
“The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds the most discoveries, is not ‘Eureka!’ (I found it!) but ‘That’s funny’” – Isaac Asimov
Find more Creativity Quotes here.
Discover more quotes daily in my Twitter and Facebook streams

SEVEN – David DuChemin’s New Book

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David DuChemin’s first art book, SEVEN is a retrospective of his work from 2006 to early 2013 when he visited seven continents in seven years.
David describes his new book SEVEN, “I created this as a legacy piece. I wanted to create something beautiful, inside and out. Something that was a delight to touch and hold. I wanted something that would inspire and show you the world the way I see it, in these fleeting glimpses of beauty, hope, and wonder. Unlike so much of what I publish, this is not an educational book. The book opens with a short essay about the gift of photography, and what follows is photograph after photograph, quietly captioned with location and date. I want, at the end of the day, my photographs to speak for themselves. I also believe that looking at, and studying, photographs, is some of the best education we can have in terms of making our own photographs.”
The images in SEVEN are diverse in location, subject (portraits, wildlife, landscape), and style (documentary, minimalism, impressionism) yet all share David’s warm human touch and soulfully reflective nature. I particularly like his use of negative space.
Preview and order the book SEVEN here.
Find out more about David DuChemin here.

Two Talks On The Creative Process At TEDx & Google

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My TED and Google talks have a lot in common. Both discuss creativity as a dynamic process that we all engage in with our own unique orientations to. While there are classic operations we all perform, how we combine them and the uses we put them to. Experimentation and becoming more versatile is the key to turbo-charging your creative life. You’ll find dozens of tips and lots of inspiration in both of these talks.

Schedule a talk for your organization here.

Learn more in my creativity workshops.

The Creative Process – Google Talk


I spoke about the creative process at Google headquarters a few weeks ago.
I began with the stories behind a few of the photographs I’ve made that have changed the way I think and see.
Then I talked about game changing advances in technology that have expanded the ways I see and changed the way I make photographs.
And I spoke about how using other media (like drawing and writing) can enhance perception and the photographs we make.
Distilled into one line … How an artist gets there influences where they arrive.
Preview my eBook Process here.
View my TED Talk You’re More Creative Than You Think You Are here.

Try New Things – The Story Behind The Image

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Illumination II, Sossusvlei, Namibia 2012

 In 2010, during my third trip to one of the oldest desert’s in the world, Namibia’s Sossusvlei dune field, I enjoyed one of the most sublime hours of my life, from a helicopter. Moments of grace like this fill you with reverence for the miracle world we live in and a deep abiding gratitude to be a part of it all. I was prepared for it, but nonetheless surprised.
Before arriving, to plan where to go and how to maximize my time this magnificent dune field, I had done a considerable amount of virtual aerial research with Google Earth, zooming and panning images made from the combination of thousands of satellite images at various magnifications, to familiarize myself with where it started and stopped, how it changed in character, and the relative location of landmarks such as the dunes Big Mama and Big Daddy and the famous clay playa Deadvlei. This was a new way of scouting a location for me and it paid dividends making the limited time I had there more efficient and productive.
None of that could have prepared me for the changing angle of light or weather. On site, I had to assess the impact of current conditions. We were on the second flight of the day, an hour after sunrise. All week long, the air was filled with dust from far off sandstorms that scattered the rays of the sun, permeating the sky with a white gold light. Was this a liability or an asset? How could I make it one and not another?
Even at an altitude of 3,000 feet, twice the height of the largest dunes, I found I couldn’t fit the vast dune field into my viewfinder. So I improvised and started making multi-shot exposures for panoramic stitches while moving. It seemed like a bold move, if the two or three shots did not merge successfully then both would be lost. Then, one of my companions, made an even bolder move, requesting we do a 360-degree stationary rotation so that he could make a panoramic image of the entire dune field. Would it work? To my delight both methods worked.
Neither experiment would have been successful were it not for new image processing software that provided better image stitching capabilities. (Not long ago, it wouldn’t even have been possible to convincingly combine two separate exposures.) More new image processing features aided the final realization of this image. I used new lens profile corrections, designed to remove optical distortions, to expressively distort the image. Quite different than a change in angle of view, which reveals and obscures information, these distortions offered complementary but distinctly different visual effects, changing relative proportions and spatial relationships within the image. This furthered my ongoing experiments to compare and contrast the two and so learn to fully utilize them in tandem with one another intuitively.
Ever since that day, I don’t see things in the same ways. Now I also see in new ways. It’s important to try new things. Trying new things stimulates new growth.
Questions
How do new developments change your experience?
How do new developments change your thinking?
How do new developments change your actions?
How can you use new developments to innovate?
Which new developments are likely to impact your creations most?
Find out more about this image here.
View more related images here.
Read more The Stories Behind The Images here.

Green Action – Harvest Rainwater for Personal Use

It’s summer in the northern hemisphere and along with the scorching heat we have the occasional torrential rain.  The collection and reuse of rainwater by harvesting systems help provide independent water supplies during regional water restrictions. These systems also circumvent the rainwater washing environmentally harmful lawn pesticides into storm drain, sewers and waterways.  When rainwater is harvested we reduce the overall flow of these pollutants into public waterways.
In many regions of our country, cities, counties and even certain states have begun to encouraging rainwater collection to supplement local supply.  Many countries worldwide have made rainwater harvesting mandatory.  In India, rainwater harvesting to avoid ground water depletion, has been made a requirement for every building.  In the United Kingdom a new building code has been established to encourage the use of rainwater collection for everything from flushing toilets to watering their gardens.
Learn more about Rainwater Harvesting here.
Learn how to collect rainwater here.