by successfulbob | inspiration, photographers health, photography - art quote, photography books, photography creativity, photography education
Sunday Photo/Art Quote – Do It
Ever talked yourself out of doing something?
You know. You want to try something new or exciting of different and the little voices start the Yam Yam Yammering away inside your brain with all the reasons something may not be a good idea. People won’t like it. It won’t turn out the way you think. It’s a waste of time. Yam, Yam and more Yam!
Turn the circus off. (more on How to do that in a moment!)
Right now lets turn to the quote of the day that inspired this post…
“If you don’t do it, you don’t know what might happen.” Harry Callahan
Harry Callahan was a photographer inspired to pursue his career by a talk given by Ansel Adams. He was first and foremost an educator only producing about a half dozen finished images a year…
How to Quiet the Yam Yam Yam
Slow down.
Meditate.
Take time to practice meditation. The brain’s job, in addition to maintaining our living functions like breathing and heartbeat, is to create thoughts. Lots of thoughts. A real, lot, whole bunch of thoughts that can crowd our mind and create noise. (that was the circus I was referring to earlier) When the noise is on and you can’t concentrate then any thought that comes through, usually negative thoughts, can keep us from trying new things.
Meditation allows us to practice allowing those thoughts to move through without grabbing our full attention allowing us to concentrate on the things that can actually be of help. Whenever I suggest this there’s an almost immediate plethora of excuses , “But Bob, I can’t meditate, I don’t have time.” “I can never get my mind to calm down!” “I just can’t get the hang of it..” And all of those excuses are true until you begin the practice of meditation.
Have you ever learned to do anything without some training? And practice? And failure along the way? Of course not. Meditation is the same. Learn. Study. Practice and meditation will help you also. One book I found to be helpful is “Wherever You Go, There You Are” by Jon Kabot-Zin Easy read. Easy practice from someone who has been studying the mental and physical health benefits of meditation for many years.
Don’t let the naysayer of your brain keep you from pushing boundaries.
Yours in Creative Photography, Bob
PS – This meditation stuff can help make you healthier too! Let me know how it works for you…
Check out the book by clicking above. If you buy anything using the link Amazon will give me a small affiliate fee that costs you nothing and helps support this web site.
by successfulbob | photography, photography - art quote, photography education
Sunday Photo/Art Quote – Artist’s Doubts
Doubt.
Fear of failure.
Fear of success.
Fear of being a success at being a failure.
It’s 1:48AM and I’m having trouble sleeping. I spent the day putting finishing touches on images for the Southwest District Photographic Competition put on by Professional Photographers of America. What’s my problem? I have had success in the past. I’ve already earned my degrees and received awards for my imagery. Last year one of my images even made it to help represent Team USA at the World Photographic Cup!
My problem is I might not measure up this time…
So rather than tossing and turning and knowing my love of searching for inspirational quotes involving art I got up to scour the Internet and found this gem.
“The greater the artist, the greater the doubt. Perfect confidence is granted to the less talented as a consolation prize.” Robert Hughes (Art Critic and author)
Not that I think I’m a great artist, but I do have aspirations.
And, it’s nice to know I’m not alone.
Now back to the desktop computer to check on my work and put a couple finishing flourishes on some of my photographic entries before I upload them tomorrow, unh make that later today… and maybe then I can get back to sleep.
Do these things keep you up too???
Yours in Creative Photography, Bob
PS – In my search of the subject I came found a lot of quote about artists feeling a bit insecure about their work. Here’s a couple more…
“Doubt is part of the creative process.”
“We work in the dark – we do what we can – we give what we have. Our doubt is our passion and our passion is our task. The rest is the madness of art.” Henry James
“Talent and determination are no warrant against confusion, nor are they a guaranty to produce great art.” Leon Krier
by successfulbob | photography - art quote, photography creativity, photography education, photography marketing
Sunday Photo/Art Quote March 6
Usually the Sunday Photo/Art Quote is devoted to creative arts and how to get better as an artist. Today it’s kind of a two-pronged thrust tied in with business. We are artists. But if we don’t get paid enough and often enough we’ll be out of business and not able to stay in this creative field.
Today’s quote comes from a man who is all business, yet appreciates and collects art. He is the founder of the Wizard Academy (an out-of-the-box-place-of-learning) and writes a weekly piece you can subscribe to called the Monday Morning Memo. (I know I look forward to the Memo and the subsequent foray through the Rabbit Hole that touches on art, science, business, the weird, music, art – well you gotta go there to understand)
But I digress. Here’s today’s quote…
“Every door of opportunity begins as a window in the mind.” Roy H. Williams
The reason this quote came forward this morning was because I gave a talk to the professional photographers of Michigan on ‘Personal Projects – Why to do them, how to do them and how to make money doing them’. The talk ties creating art for it’s own sake and finding a way to monetize it. I realized that every project I assigned myself I ALWAYS learned something new and found it led to at least one, if not more, of these five things…
• Service to my community. • Press releases. • Photographic competition images. • Food. • Money.
And, not necessarily was that list in order of importance. Most of the time I wanted to learn a new skill and then found a way to tie it to the list for extra benefit.
Think about his quote. Sit with yourself and quiet your mind. (I know it can be hard to do with the circus running ’round in there!) But do your best. Relax. Clear. Be in this moment for a little while. Can you see the window? What is just outside that you would like to do? Dwell there for a bit. Expand the idea.
Go do it…
Yours in Creative Photography, Bob
PS – have some thoughts you’ like to share? I appreciate comments and moving this into a dialog. Agree? Disagree? Let me know….
by successfulbob | inspiration, photography - art quote, photography education
Photo Art Quote
Many photographers ask me, “Where do you get your ideas?”
And because I believe this artist says it ever so much better than I do I think I’ll turn most today’s Photo/Art Quote over to Chuck Close from a Facebook Post in Patron of the Arts.
“Inspiration is for amateurs; the rest of us just show up and get to work.” Chuck Close
“The advice I like to give young artists, or really anybody who’ll listen to me, is not to wait around for inspiration. Inspiration is for amateurs; the rest of us just show up and get to work. If you wait around for the clouds to part and a bolt of lightning to strike you in the brain, you are not going to make an awful lot of work. All the best ideas come out of the process; they come out of the work itself. Things occur to you. If you’re sitting around trying to dream up a great art idea, you can sit there a long time before anything happens. But if you just get to work, something will occur to you and something else will occur to you and something else that you reject will push you in another direction. Inspiration is absolutely unnecessary and somehow deceptive. You feel like you need this great idea before you can get down to work, and I find that’s almost never the case.” – Chuck Close
If you haven’t heard of Chuck before make sure you read up on his story and take a look at his work (remember these pieces can be HUGE) and his web site and you will be even more inspired to follow his advice and thoughts.
Yours in Creative Photography, Bob
PS – this photo/art quote is a bit late
by successfulbob | photography, photography - art quote, photography creativity, photography education
Sunday Photo/Art Quote
I’m reminded of a song.
Paraphrasing here but you’ll get the idea. The lyrics go something like this,
“I want it all, I want it all, AND I WANT IT NOW!!’
We live in a very now society. Information is almost instantaneous. Look at the web. I just typed the search term photography into my browser and had access to About 1,020,000,000 results (0.66 seconds) from Google. Holy Crap! The reason I bring this up is that technology has spoiled us in many ways. This quick access to information has spread to the ability of cameras to give us a quick result that’s good enough. AKA in focus and a decent exposure.
This leads to two things I’ve noticed. The lament that a photographer isn’t creating ‘enough’. Enough new or exciting or different images. Or worse. A photographer thinking that they are creating wonderful images and not receiving the just kudos.
Let us now move on to today’s quote.
“If I have any ‘message’ worth giving to a beginner it is that there are no short cuts in photography.” Edward Weston
Granted that when Weston shared this quote the processes for attaining images was more difficult than we have at our disposal today. But the abiltiy to see, and bring that vision, to our final images still takes knowledge and time.
Practice. Experimentation. Study. Making mistakes. Education. And, more practice. Push the limits of the new tech.
Rinse and repeat.
Don’t do the same thing over and over and expect different results. That’s someone’s definition of insanity often attributed to Einstein.
That is what ultimately leads to creating compelling imagery.
Yours in Creative Photography, Bob
PS – What are you doing daily, or weekly, to take your image creation skills to the next level?
PPS – Esoterica – Weston was pushing the material he had at hand. For example, in his iconic studio photographs of the peppers and nautilus shells did you know that the low rated ISO of the sheet film used made it necessary for very long exposures? Some as long as 4½ hours!!
by successfulbob | photography - art quote, photography education
Photo Art Quote for Sunday Thinking
Writing this Photo Art Quote post for the blog used to be a bit of a chore… But I find more and more, this time of thinking about art and how it works for our business, and health, and state of mind for creating has been quite interesting. It has forced me to think about the creation process in all areas of art, not just photography. How all artists including photographers become and stay creative.
Which brings us to today’s conversation. The quote is from New York writer Michael Kanin who won an Academy Award for Best Screenplay and wrote comedy material for comics, actors and movies. Obviously successful but seems to have found the day-to-day part of the job a chore…
“I don’t like to write, but I love to have written.” Michael Kanin
This quote caught my attention because there are times when working on a photo project I just want to toss it out and go on to something new. It usually turns out that these become the finished images that show the most depth and of which I am most proud to have completed. Don’t get me wrong. I love photography! But there are occasions when the work that’s necessary to bring a project to fruition seems like it will go on forever. Of course, there are times when you have yo know when to quit when enough is enough. But when is that?
Our society has become a ‘I want it now!’ creature. Things come to us at the speed of the Internet. (which is really, really FAST! A search on the word ‘photography’ gave this result – About 979,000,000 results (0.66 seconds) ) We have access to more information than ever before and I find that to be a blessing and a curse. A blessing because the access to material and the ability to learn new things is incredible and I embrace it. And, I believe it to be a curse for the exact same reason. It can be difficult to concentrate on a single project when so many ideas are clamoring for attention.
Digital has made it easier than ever to create. The question becomes is it just ‘good enough’ and it’s time to move on? Or can we delve deeper to create something of more lasting value?
I suppose it’s a question for the ages and one we should probably revisit with regularity.
So do you labor enough to take your images to the next level? Or is an image ‘good enough’?
Yours in Creative Photography, Bob
