Seth Godin on Creativity…
Posted by Dean Bradshaw | Filed under Thoughts and Theory
99% of the time, in my experience, the hard part about creativity isn’t coming up with something no one has ever thought of before. The hard part is actually executing the thing you’ve thought of.
- Seth Godin
Tags: creativity
Chuck Close: Thoughts on photography and personal voice
Posted by Dean Bradshaw | Filed under visual style in photography
The thing that interests me about photography and why it’s different from all other media, is that it’s the only medium in which there is even the possibility of an accidental masterpiece. You cannot make an accidental masterpiece if you’re a painter or a sculptor. It’s just not going to happen. Something will be wrong.
This is simultaneously photography’s great advantage and its Achilles’ heel: it is the easiest medium in which to be competent. Anybody can be a marginally capable photographer, but it takes a lot of work to learn to become even a competent painter. Now, having said that, I think while photography is the easiest medium in which to be competent, it is probably the hardest one in which to develop an idiosyncratic personal vision. It’s the hardest medium in which to separate yourself from all those other people who are doing reasonably good stuff and to find a personal voice, your own vision, and to make something that is truly, memorably yours and not someone else’s. A recognized signature style of photography is an incredibly difficult thing to achieve.
It always amazes me that just when I think that there’s nothing left to do in photography and that all permutations and possibilities have been exhausted, someone comes along and puts the medium to a new use, and makes it his or her own, yanks it out of this kind of amateur status, and makes it as profound and moving and as formally interesting as any other medium. It’s like pushing something heavy uphill. Photography’s not an easy medium. It is, finally, perhaps the hardest of them all.
Tags: Art, creativity, Style
Copy Cat: Where are we headed – homogeny?
Posted by Dean Bradshaw | Filed under Thoughts and Theory
Thanks to the internet, we are, or at least ‘can be’ exposed to more creative material than ever before. Budding artists and creatives have access to an enormous repository of other people’s work – from the primitive creative meanderings of the technical novice the very best in the medium.
This is a big deal – before the internet – artists were much more isolated data points, many unable to view some of the most amazing work being done in the world because of the simple fact that back then – the world was a much bigger place.
An element of globalisation -it seems that this phenomenon has radically changed the playing field in all the creative spheres. Not only does it mean that one can view the ‘best’ work in the world, but also that one’s work can now stand on an international pedestal where once it was confined to the solitude of a much smaller world. Naturally, such an abundant collective has raised the bar for what is deemed to be truly great work and the world’s global artistic consciousness has reached a whole new level .
However, despite the amazing opportunity to learn from this artistic collective – negative aspects seem to be emerging as well. It would seem that the diverse assemblage of the world’s creative vision is becoming a somewhat homogeneous mixture – as multitudes of people aspire to the techniques and ‘vision’ of the creative leaders in their medium. No longer do artists aspire to develop and nurture their own unique creative vision – rather many of them become mesmerised with mimicking the techniques of the ‘best’ within their medium – confined – as they become shackled to their interpretation of another’s clarity.
As we are seeing – more and more derivative work is being created at the expense of a varied spectrum – not because of globalisation or the internet – but because it is now far easier to latch onto mimicry than it is to latch onto innovation.
But all is not lost – in such a climate those who dare to do something different will reap the rewards…
So go out there and create something unique!
Tags: creativity, originality
Finding Style: the dilemma of photography
Posted by Dean Bradshaw | Filed under Thoughts and Theory
I came across this fascinating insight by Chuck Close whilst watching a documentary on the history of the photographic medium. It has led me down and interesting path of thought, one that I have been pondering in the back of my mind for a while, which has now been forced to the forefront of my imagination – the notion of photographic Style.
Here’s the dilemma and the strength of photography.
Its the easiest medium in which to be competent, but it’s the hardest medium in which to have personal vision which is readily identifiable. There is no physicality to a photograph…there is nothing you can point to and say “this is the work of that artists hands”.
So then…how do you make a photograph that somebody immediately knows as the work of a particular artist?
Well that is a very difficult and complicated thing to come up with – and when someone really ends up nailing down a particular kind of vision to such an extent that they own that vision – you know they’ve really done something.
- Chuck Close (American painter and photographer who achieved fame as a photorealist.)
I’m going to consider photographic style over a few more posts, as it can take one very far down the rabbit hole…
What are your thoughts on the matter?
Tags: Art, creativity, Philosophy, Style
Growing Creatives!
Posted by Dean Bradshaw | Filed under Advertising, Thoughts and Theory
If only it were that easy!
Tags: Advertising, creativity, link, video, youtube
