Photo projects, creativity and limitations.

I remember getting really excited about school projects, well my English ones mostly. When we were given creative writing assignments I would spend a few minutes brainstorming and once I had hit on an idea I liked, my mind would start running and from there I would be lost to it, so wrapped up in the process that it did not seem as if I was actually in charge of the thoughts my mind was coming up with. It was like sprinting downhill, your legs move more out of sheer momentum than controlled intent. It’s exhilarating. Since leaving school, I have found this in some of the poetry assignments and philosophy essays I did at university, but not in much else.  It’s strange, you would think that now with time on my hands and no one telling me what to do, I would be flinging myself at creative projects. I am not really though, sure I am constantly doing decently creative work, but not getting swept up in it.  I have this creative energy welling up inside me and my attempts at doing anything with it seem stunted. I am frustrated by my inability to focus it properly. Just the other day I was feeling creative and instead of heading out throwing myself into a project to come home feeling invigorated and excited about what I had created, I actually wasted money on buying clay and ended up sitting on the couch with a movie, half concentrating whilst making a rather sad looking tree, which is now moping around my desk self consciously, rather embarrassed that its creator was an adult.

Recently however, I experienced a tinge of this excitement again; a photographer friend of mine asked me if I would be interested in us setting a photo assignment each month that we have to complete. I agreed and we set our first project this month, to shoot a 3 by 3 series of square crop images using a 50mm prime lens and a wide aperture of between F2 and F4.  So there had to be an overriding concept that was consistent throughout the images, and this concept had to make use of a low depth of field, and I had to be relatively up close with my subject. I really enjoyed thinking about the different possible ideas and trying them out only to get swept away in a concept I didn’t plan for at all.

This made me realise what had been missing since the school and university assignments…boundaries.  I think creativity flows best not from unlimited freedom, but from boundaries, it’s the challenge of constraints, the focus of limitations that gets the mind on a creative buzz.

Setting boundaries is a great way to improve your skills as a photographer, teaching you better how to master your equipment, learning new tricks, and ultimately thinking out the box. Something as simple as constraining yourself to a prime lens (a lens that can’t zoom in and out-a fixed focal length)for a day will give you a better idea of what scenarios that lens works best in, and set a reference for that focal length in your head .

On this particular assignment I wouldn’t say that I learned anything groundbreaking but I did gain from it none the less.  My original plan was to use the low depth of field to portray something about the persistent beauty of the living, the organic. To contrast sharp clear leaves, birds and all things living against blurry buildings, gates and constructions to communicate that even in the obscurity of a city, life grows through the cracks and is unavoidably a part of our world. Cheesy I know but it appealed to my romantic side and I liked the spiritual undertone to the message.

I headed off to Kalk Bay thinking of the train tracks, seagulls, and pot-plants and, whilst I was walking around, what ended up grabbing my attention had nothing whatsoever to do with my romantic musings. I came across a statue of a woman staring across the street and had the idea of doing a portrait shoot with her.

I liked the idea of trying to convey different moods and feels to a “person” and try “capture” personality, despite the fact that lighting, clothing, position, expression and body language would be consistent. So essentially all the work was left up to perspective. This became the focus of the day and every statue I met in and around Kalk Bay, I had a mini portrait session with. It was refreshing to do a shoot where your subjects have no issue with personal space, unlimited patience and is not at all self conscious.

I came back having re-visited some of my film and media lessons on perspective and what a powerful tool it actually is in visual communication, as well as gaining some new ideas for how to use shallow depth of field in a portrait session. Shooting with visual consistency in mind was also a good exercise, and a habit I need to get into if I am going to be creating wedding albums.

The real value of this project for me however, was simply heading out with my camera, with neither a client nor my portfolio in mind and getting carried away in a creative process, inspired not by freedom, but the challenge of limitations.

I ended up doing the series on a Buddha fountain I had found mostly because I liked the over-all look and feel of the images. All the photos were taken at F2 on manual with the white balance on fluorescent (4000K) which gives the images their blue toning. I did not edit them apart from resizing and sharpening for web…