Stock photography has officially achieved critical mass in the absurdity department. I grant you, stock photographers are as much instruments of the marketplace as any other professional service provider and are therefore subject to the whims of the focus groups, the advertising big wigs, the ebb and flow of the dollars that keep them knee-deep in lenses and strobes. But when was the last time you saw a product advertised by a stock photograph and thought to yourself, That could totally be me in that picture?
There you are, holding a slice of kiwi in front of each eye, like any normal Tuesday, right? You look so happy about this kiwi you could make a coke addict jealous. The look on your face is one of such unbridled joy, such boundless euphoria, it would be hard for any bystander not to want your life at that moment.
It is easy to say that we are “standing at the crossroads.” Occasionally it’s even true, but the expression sounds so important, it evokes such responsibility, that it’s hard for scientists, technologists, journalists, historians, economists, and futurists to hold back the urge, even if the decision to be made is minor, the outcome arbitrary.
So recognize that it is with a full understanding that I say to you, right now, we stand at the crossroads of creativity. We’ve stood here before, we will stand here again, but I can say categorically that we stand here now and it is an important and exciting time to be a photographer. (more…)
Chris Benton is a professor of architecture at the University of California, Berkeley. He also straps his digital SLR onto a kite string and takes some of the most amazing aerial photographs I have ever seen. Chris combines a truly gifted eye for composition with a an engineer’s savvy for mechanical problem solving.
Using kites and remote-controlled camera rigs built by hand in his basement, Chris captures the world top-down, photographing everything from people and buildings to the patterns of nature. Watch this video from Make Magazine and be stunned!
Chris is quick to humbly share his experience and tips for aerial kite photography on his website (graciously hosted by Berkeley!)
I was blown away by the evolution of Chris’s camera rigs, which grew from fixed harnesses with rudimentary mechanical timers based on elastic bands, Silly Putty, and disposable cameras, to what he now uses, a remote-controlled, servo motor-driven, three-axis robot.
It’s definitely not commonplace for someone to possess both a grasp of electronic and mechanical engineering and a hawk-eye for artistic composition. Chris Benton has both.
Part Two: Cars
Aside from being an avid photographer, I admit to a streak of BMWfanboyism. When it comes to sports cars that are still solid daily drivers that make you feel like you’ve personally discovered the center of the universe and you’re sitting directly within it, nobody does it better than BMW.
To hype the release of their latest creation, the Z4 Roadster, BMW hired artist Robin Rhode to dip the Z4’s tires in multi-colored paints and drive it around like a fingerpainting on a warehouse scale. This was one of the most indulgent marketing campaigns I could think of.
And here is a pretty cool video of how they put this thing together:
The next time you’re out shooting, or sitting around the house thinking about how next to use that studio space you set up in the basement, or the garage, or the attic… Think about breaking out of the box and doing something completely different. Robin Rhode did, and I think it came out pretty well.
On the path to creativity, it’s not only okay to stop and smell the roses, it’s encouraged.
My approach to inspiration is not to chase it; I tend to walk around in a place or idly browse others’ works until the desire to create something strikes. Still, it’s nice to have a “toolbox” of tricks to get you past those creative lulls in life. According to psychologist Jonathan Schooler (no, really, that’s his actual name), daydreaming is one possible answer.
Well, if you know you’re doing it, that is.
From Boston.com (Jonah Lehrer):
“If your mind didn’t wander, then you’d be largely shackled to whatever you are doing right now,” says Jonathan Schooler, a psychologist at the University of California, Santa Barbara. “But instead you can engage in mental time travel and other kinds of simulation. During a daydream, your thoughts are really unbounded.”
And who wouldn’t want to time travel? The key, though, is self-awareness of your wandering mind. The study concluded that people who were able to recognize when they were daydreaming demonstrated more of a predilection to creativity than those who were only able to identify their daydreams after they happened.
When I read this story I began thinking about my own daydreaming habits. I think I can say with certainty that I absolutely know when I’m daydreaming… Because I love it. There’s nothing like taking a little break from reality now and then!
Despite photography’s firm basis in reality—capturing real light reflecting off of real objects—it is in so many ways an escape from reality, and an art form that can benefit from your daydreams just as much as any other.
So the next time you find yourself staring off into the distance and traveling mentally through time and space, don’t pull yourself back down to Earth so quickly.
Yesterday, Dan Heller posted an interesting article called Creative Commons and Photography in which he decries the Creative Commons not only as an ineffective and misguided licensing structure for photographers, but as a detriment to its own ends when used by them. I truly believe that he couldn’t be further from the truth, but because his article was so specific I would be doing everyone a disservice to leave my reaction as a mere sound bite.
After the jump, more of Dan’s rantings followed by more of my rantings, hopefully to end with a meaningful conclusion… But no promises. (more…)
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