Variations

Creativity, Creativity - Storytelling, Magazine  Comment
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Here’s an excerpt from my article in the current issue of After Capture magazine.
“Once you’ve identified the core concerns, strengths, and weaknesses a body of work your path becomes clearer. Stick to your strong points; repeat them. Eliminate or minimize weaknesses. Introduce small variations of less essential items to add life, complexity, and nuances to the work. Enrich text with subtext. Make a list of possible variations upon the elements that you’ve identified. Consider, different points of view and different combinations of elements. Keep adding to your list as time goes on. It’s likely you’ll generate many more ideas than you can accomplish in a short time. With these options in mind you’ll never run out of ideas to pursue. Pursue only the very best ideas; let the lesser ideas pass you by. How do you evaluate new ideas? Ask yourself some questions. How much repetition leads to saturation (adding more information without adding anything new)? How much variation can you support without losing track of the essential idea and starting a new one? Does including a variation reinforce or distract from the entire body of work and its theme? If it reinforces it, include it. If it distracts from it, set it aside for another use. Quite often these images can start new bodies of work. They can even serve as bridges between related bodies of work. Engaging this process consciously increases the likelihood that you will produce the more significant results both now and in the future. You’ll know what to move forward on and when to move forward. You’ll know what to defer and when to defer it so you don’t get sidetracked …”
Find my PDFs on Creativity here.
Learn these and other core concepts in my workshops.

Learn to Earn

Creativity - Exercises  Comment
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audio_green


Listen – 1:52
Idea
Learn to earn. The more you know the more opportunities lie before you. The more you know the more productive you are. The more you know the better your product becomes. The more you know the more valuable you are. Investing in your knowledge base and skill set is the best investment you can make. Make time to learn. Learn after you wake up. Get up early and spend an hour inspiring yourself and satisfying your curiosity. Continue learning by doing new things during the day. Learn before you go to sleep. Go to bed early and read or watch educational enriching material. Malcolm Gladwell’s book Outliers suggests it takes 10,000 hours to become a master in a given field. You can’t make10,000 hours go faster, or pass them without interruption, but you can get to there one hour at a time. And you don’t have to spend 10,000 hours to see immediate benefits. Sometimes all it takes to transform ordinary into extraordinary is one good idea. But that one good idea won’t find you. You’ve got to find it. Make time to explore the hidden potentials in any situation and in yourself. Make time to learn. You’ll start earning immediately.
Exercise
Take action now. Make a list of the subjects you’re interested in learning or are most valuable for you to learn. Write at least six things down right now. Keep adding to this list over time. Next, prioritize the items on your list. Rate your items based on two criteria. What’s easiest to learn now? What’s most valuable to learn over time? Start learning the items that are both most valuable and easiest to learn. Plan to work your way to the others over time. Take a first step right now. Demonstrate your commitment to yourself. Find an online resource, order a book or DVD, sign up for a seminar or workshop. Do something. Do anything. Start now.
Listen to more inspiring ideas here.

Find out how to be more effective in your creative life in my workshops.

Learn to Earn

Audio, Creativity  Comment
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learntoearn


Learn to earn. The more you know the more opportunities lie before you. The more you know the more productive you are. The more you know the better your product becomes. The more you know the more valuable you are. Investing in your knowledge base and skill set is the best investment you can make. Make time to learn. Learn after you wake up. Get up early and spend an hour inspiring yourself and satisfying your curiosity. Continue learning by doing new things during the day. Learn before you go to sleep. Go to bed early and read or watch educational enriching material. Malcolm Gladwell’s book Outliers suggests it takes 10,000 hours to become a master in a given field. You can’t make10,000 hours go faster, or pass them without interruption, but you can get to there one hour at a time. And you don’t have to spend 10,000 hours to see immediate benefits. Sometimes all it takes to transform ordinary into extraordinary is one good idea. But that one good idea won’t find you. You’ve got to find it. Make time to explore the hidden potentials in any situation and in yourself. Make time to learn. You’ll start earning immediately.
Listen to more creativity tips here.

Kids

Creativity  Comment
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Kids do the most creative things. My seven year old son asked for the big box my new Epson 9900 printer arrived in. He spent the next half hour quietly working in the gallery. Then he invited my wife to come have her picture made. He’d cut a small flap in one side of the box and put a seat on the inside, got a stack of blank cards, and a box of crayons. Led by the hand, she sat inside. He looked through the flap – and drew her portrait. On the outside of the box he wrote “photo booth”. We just don’t have the heart to take it down. We smile every time we look at it. Want to be more creative? Spend more time with kids. And spend more time being childlike.
Check out my Creativity and Field workshops here.
Check out my Digital Printing workshops here.
Check out the Epson Print Academy here.

Drake Passage

Destination - Antarctica, Workshop  Comment
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More Drake. It’s gone from calm to rough. I’m sure it will change again. It’s a long stretch home filled with seminars and reviews.

Today I talked about the importance of defining a project that makes the work we do tangible and shareable. My project will be to update my Antarctica Blurb book with new images and updated text. I then handed the session off to Olaf Willoughby who talked about his Antarctica book (PDF for World Wildlife Federation and on demand print through Lulu), which he did after our first 2005 voyage, and it’s effectiveness for environmental advocacy. It’s inspiring to hear what one man can do.
See my previous post on Olaf from early this month.
See my Defining a Project PDF here.
Enjoy my Antarctica galleries, book, and statements.
Learn more about my workshops here.
Early registrants get discounts at home.
Members get discounts abroad.

Creativity – Commenting On Images

Creativity, Reviewing  Comment
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How many times have you been frustrated by the feedback you get and give?
Often it’s too simple.
“I like it.”
“I don’t like it.”
But you want more.
If you knew more you could improve more.
So, go further!
Whenever you’re looking at images ask yourself for more with one simple word. “Why?”
You many be surprised how hard it is to put your thoughts and feelings into words.
Don’t quit.
Try anyway.
You’ll find out some really interesting things.
Later, start asking others, “Why?”
You’ll get some really interesting answers.
Check out 12 books I recommend on critical thinking in photography here.
Get feedback in my workshops.

JPC on thirdeyephotozine.com

Creativity, Interviewed  Comment
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Recently Rayhaan Traboulay interviewed me for his online magazine thirdeyephotozine. Here’s an excerpt.
RH I recently had a discussion with a friend about creativity within people. I
find that people either generally “have it” or don’t. I believe that you
can’t really teach it too much. Theres room for improvement and critiques
and so on, but I find it is either innate in someone or it’s not. Would you
agree or no?
JPC I disagree – strongly. To be a successful creative person in any field, it
takes perseverance, intelligence, hard work, skill, talent, and luck – in
that order. Everyone is creative. Different people have different creative
strengths. It helps to find the areas each of us are strongest in and to
develop skills within other areas to become more versatile. Creativity is
not contained to the arts. Some of the most creative people in history and
with us on the planet today work in the fields of science and business. We
all have something to offer. And something to learn from each other.
Do you think you can learn to be more creative? Comment here!
Read the rest of the interview here.
Read more interviews here.
Read and hear my comments on my images here.
Find free PDFs on making artist’s statements here.
Hear my free tips on becoming more creative here.
See my images and get free portable galleries here.

The Art of Arranging

Creativity, Creativity - Storytelling, Magazine  Comment
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Proximity and sequencing matter. The first sequence suggests an approaching storm, while the second suggests clearing skies.
How you present your work may be almost as important as what work you present. It’s the art of arranging. And it is an art, which involves specific techniques that can be learned. What are some of the guiding principles involved? Here are a few.
Sequence matters. Start strong. Finish strong. Make getting there interesting. Whether it’s a symphony, a novel, or an exhibit. It’s good advice for arranging any creative product.
To sequence a project, you can use the metaphor of building a fence. The strongest pieces can be thought of as posts. The less strong pieces can be thought of as rails. You want to start and end with very strongest pieces to create a strong structure. You want to periodically reinforce runs of less strong units with one or more stronger units. You don’t want long runs of rails without posts or the structure may fail. A fence made only of posts becomes something else entirely, a wall with no variation or grace. The number of strong pieces you include determines how long a fence will be, though the number of other images you include may modify length somewhat …
What tips do you have for sequencing? How have you used this potential for your work? Comment here!
Check out the rest of this article in my column Illuminating Creativity in this month’s AfterCapture magazine.
Check out AfterCapture.com here.
Find 6 related PDFs here.
Learn these and other techniques in my Fine Digital Print Expert workshop here.