Photographer Resources |
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Overcoming Creative Blocks
If you have ever experienced a phase in your work when ideas seem to dry up - you go blank, feel stuck and unable to move forwards - you are not alone.
Creative blocks are the enemy of artists and creatives the world over. They can bring on anxiety and panic, sabotage a project and confidence can plummet.
It might be helpful to know that it is highly unlikely that any serious artist or creative individual goes through their life without having encountered multiple blocks when they least expect it: when there are demands on them to prove themselves or just when they need to finish a project.
Indeed, they are very normal and if proactively embraced can lead to a renewal of positivity and self-belief and possibly even a new creative direction.
The key is to allow for maverick and playful activity, giving yourself permission to make mistakes to see what might come from the experience. You may even find that aspects of the ‘mistake’ miraculously turns out to be your inspiration.
Here are a few ideas to help rejuvenate your creativity:
1. Break your own rules.
Habits can be the death knell for creativity. Try to notice if you tend to follow your own ingrained ways of working. Note down what they are and then give yourself permission to let go of these restrictions to allow for something different to happen. Consider what the opposite might be.
When you force yourself to experiment under new rules, unexpected ideas can be given the space to develop.
2. Experiment: shoot out of your comfort zone.
Encourage yourself to be playful and take a few risks. It might be that you choose a subject/treatment/angle/location that you don’t usually work with or often avoid. An analogy with a landscape painter might be putting down the paintbrush and colour palette ‘usually’ worked with and start experimenting with collage, deliberately using a loose methodology: turning the page upside down, looking at it in the mirror…not worrying what the output will be. This just might lead to unexpected discoveries and ideas for the future.
If you are a portrait photographer who usually shoots on location, try the studio or empty corner of a room – test yourself to see how and whether you can generate a group of images with meaning and depth. Even if this is fundamentally at odds with your established business, the idea is to think about things differently which can help free up other ways of thinking.
Another example: perhaps you are an architecture/interiors photographer shooting in a wide, minimal style: work on a close-up project that doesn’t allow you to reveal a location, but still suggests the character of a set of different spaces.
This challenge can generate some unexpected results if treated as a project in its own right.
3. Pause, seek inspiration.
If you’ve tried time and again to come up with ideas for a project and nothing is emerging, it is time to step back, pause and seek inspiration from elsewhere. This may seem a luxury, but it is essential and refreshing.
Force yourself to spend a half/full day immersing yourself in a range of activities: visiting galleries (across all media), museums, specialist bookshops (that you’ve never been to), watch an atypical film, get lost in photography blog sites, collect tearsheets of work you like and stick them on a wall, walk somewhere new…engross yourself in photography books you have never explored. Look around you, soak up the experience, notice small things. All the while try to have a theme in the back of your mind you know you would like to explore, even if you have no idea why/how.
Your unconscious is a powerful tool in the creative process – trust it. You might well be surprised how ideas can be tricked into germinating through this seemingly random process.
Try to think of being stuck as an opportunity. Staying in a comfort zone can be risky; releasing yourself from norms and the ‘usual’ constraints can unlock and release new and previously unimagined ideas.
Creative blocks are the enemy of artists and creatives the world over. They can bring on anxiety and panic, sabotage a project and confidence can plummet.
It might be helpful to know that it is highly unlikely that any serious artist or creative individual goes through their life without having encountered multiple blocks when they least expect it: when there are demands on them to prove themselves or just when they need to finish a project.
Indeed, they are very normal and if proactively embraced can lead to a renewal of positivity and self-belief and possibly even a new creative direction.
The key is to allow for maverick and playful activity, giving yourself permission to make mistakes to see what might come from the experience. You may even find that aspects of the ‘mistake’ miraculously turns out to be your inspiration.
Here are a few ideas to help rejuvenate your creativity:
1. Break your own rules.
Habits can be the death knell for creativity. Try to notice if you tend to follow your own ingrained ways of working. Note down what they are and then give yourself permission to let go of these restrictions to allow for something different to happen. Consider what the opposite might be.
When you force yourself to experiment under new rules, unexpected ideas can be given the space to develop.
2. Experiment: shoot out of your comfort zone.
Encourage yourself to be playful and take a few risks. It might be that you choose a subject/treatment/angle/location that you don’t usually work with or often avoid. An analogy with a landscape painter might be putting down the paintbrush and colour palette ‘usually’ worked with and start experimenting with collage, deliberately using a loose methodology: turning the page upside down, looking at it in the mirror…not worrying what the output will be. This just might lead to unexpected discoveries and ideas for the future.
If you are a portrait photographer who usually shoots on location, try the studio or empty corner of a room – test yourself to see how and whether you can generate a group of images with meaning and depth. Even if this is fundamentally at odds with your established business, the idea is to think about things differently which can help free up other ways of thinking.
Another example: perhaps you are an architecture/interiors photographer shooting in a wide, minimal style: work on a close-up project that doesn’t allow you to reveal a location, but still suggests the character of a set of different spaces.
This challenge can generate some unexpected results if treated as a project in its own right.
3. Pause, seek inspiration.
If you’ve tried time and again to come up with ideas for a project and nothing is emerging, it is time to step back, pause and seek inspiration from elsewhere. This may seem a luxury, but it is essential and refreshing.
Force yourself to spend a half/full day immersing yourself in a range of activities: visiting galleries (across all media), museums, specialist bookshops (that you’ve never been to), watch an atypical film, get lost in photography blog sites, collect tearsheets of work you like and stick them on a wall, walk somewhere new…engross yourself in photography books you have never explored. Look around you, soak up the experience, notice small things. All the while try to have a theme in the back of your mind you know you would like to explore, even if you have no idea why/how.
Your unconscious is a powerful tool in the creative process – trust it. You might well be surprised how ideas can be tricked into germinating through this seemingly random process.
Try to think of being stuck as an opportunity. Staying in a comfort zone can be risky; releasing yourself from norms and the ‘usual’ constraints can unlock and release new and previously unimagined ideas.