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January 16, 2015 by Kat

What Makes Up “Creativity”

This morning I want to consider the definition of “creativity.” Over the last couple of weeks, I’ve been talking here about how to facilitate creativity, through routines and deadlines, but what is “creativity” anyway? How do we know we are being creative vs. just filling time? I believe there are a few things that have to be in place to make an activity fit the “creative” name.

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First off, creativity involves transforming something. Taking materials, ideas, whatever you’ve seen or learned elsewhere, and then putting something together in new ways.

Creativity involves transformation, making connections between previously disparate things.

I don’t believe being creative is “making something out of nothing,” but making something new out of what already existed before in pieces and parts. Whether that new thing is a painting or a meal or a novel, you can see that the pieces that make up the new thing — the paints, the ingredients, the words — existed before. The artist then put them together in a new way. This transformation is the first element of creativity, but it’s not the only element.

The next, and I believe vital, element of creativity is engagement and challenge. You have to be solving a new problem in order for creativity to be involved. You have to be actively thinking, working, and resolving as you move through the process. This doesn’t mean you have to be solving a new problem for humanity, but solving a problem that is new to you. A problem that engages your creativity.

If you are making something you’ve made before, time and time again, with no new element of challenge involved — that’s not creative. That’s following a recipe. “Take Thing X, combine it with Thing Y using process steps A, B, C.” If you can follow the steps to get a predictable outcome without problems along the way, that’s manufacturing. That doesn’t mean it’s easy, because accomplishing a finished piece involves skill and expertise, but it also doesn’t mean it’s creative. Creativity requires that there is some new challenge involved in the process of making something.

The element of challenge is one of the most important pieces of creativity.

It’s the challenge which keeps me learning and moving forward. It keeps me trying new things, seeking new ideas to add to the mix. It also helps explain why being merely productive is not enough for me creatively. Why I don’t stay in one place for too long with my art or my business or even my corporate job. Because once I’ve got something all figured out, once the process is in place and predictable, it not as fun anymore. It’s time to face new challenges, solve new problems, create new things.

In my art right now, I have lots of problems to solve. I still have so much to learn about mobile photography. I’m facing new challenges every day, in every piece I create. The image I’m sharing today is no exception. The tools are not always there or the way to achieve my vision is not straight forward. That’s perfect.

Combining existing elements in ways that require overcoming challenges, that’s what makes up “creativity” to me.

Filed Under: The Kat Eye View of the World Tagged With: creative growth, creative process, creativity

January 13, 2015 by Kat

Can you put Creativity on a Deadline?

Last week, we discussed what creativity craves. Between my experience and reader comments, we successfully debunked the myth that wide open, unstructured schedules are good for creativity. Creativity craves routines, along with a second element I didn’t talk about in last week’s post: Deadlines.

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Love them or hate them, deadlines do make a difference in our creative productivity. Having a real date that something is due makes you use the time you have available to be creative. Having a routine builds on that, making the time you have available really clear.

I’ll share with you a very real example on what deadlines can do for your creativity, one I’m living right now: My book on iPhone photography.

My manuscript deadline is March 1, 2015. By March 1, the manuscript and all associated files, releases, etc. must be physically (not electronically) in the hands of the publisher in order to be on the Fall publishing schedule. March 1 is a Sunday, so my real deadline is Friday, February 27. Since the files must be mailed, I need to mail them out no later than the morning of February 25 to ensure they arrive on time. So my real deadline for finishing everything and having it packed up and ready to go is February 24.

Between now and February 24, I have six weekends left. Why do the weekends matter? That’s where the routine comes in. Because I work a full-time corporate job Monday-Friday, weekends are my only opportunity right now for extended stretches of time to work on the book. I could do it in snippets in other free time, but I’m reserving weekday mornings for creating new art and blogging (still have to keep things going here!) and weekday evenings for all of the other little things that have to get done (like framing work for upcoming exhibitions). So weekends it is.

With that in mind, I have mapped out a plan of work that gets me through to the deadline, with weekly goals spelled out. The first draft is done and last weekend I finalized all of the photo examples. Over the next couple of weeks I need to complete the first revision and create the more complicated figures, so I can have an edited copy complete with photo examples out to first readers by the end of the month. It’s a lot, but I can do it without stress if I stick to the plan. I’ve already warned my family – I’m busy every weekend until March 1!

So here’s the equation that comes out of my experience:

Deadline + Routine + Plan = Creative Success

The answer is yes, you can put creativity on a deadline. In fact, I’ve found I’m more creatively productive when I do. How about you?

Filed Under: The Kat Eye View of the World Tagged With: creative process, creativity, deadline

October 24, 2012 by Kat

Understanding the Process

If “what do I want to say” is the question I ask myself when I put the camera to my eye, then “how do I want this image to feel” is the question I ask myself when I go to post-process.

In last weekend’s workshop, David talked a lot about making very intentional decisions at the time of capture to convey what we want to say. But we also talked about the role of post-processing and how he uses it. He shared some examples of images he’d edited and said, “Did it look exactly like that when I captured it? No. But this is how it felt to me.” Warm or cool, dreamy or contrasty, all of these are choices we have in our post-processing to further the expression of the image.

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This coastal scene from earlier in the summer is an example, edited early last week to prep for an exhibition submission. Was the light this pink on the evening I captured it? No. But the processing captures the emotion of the moment for me. The connection of mother and child is there in the bicycles and the figures in the background, and the warm feeling of that connection is in the tones.

This conversation comes at a time when I’ve already been thinking about my creative process and the relationship I have with post-processing. On my recent trip to England I realized how incredibly important post-processing had become to me as part of creating images. I didn’t quite know how important until I was without Lightroom, my primary tool for editing. Sure, I could make very, very basic adjustments, but it wasn’t enough. (Not to mention any edits were painfully slow in the netbook I had borrowed.) I felt, literally, like my hands were tied. I could see where I wanted to tweak highlights and shadows, maybe shift the white balance a bit. I could see where I wanted the images to end up. And I couldn’t get there. I couldn’t make the images say what I wanted them to say, feel how I wanted them to feel, without this step of the process.

The RAW files my camera captured have become just that… raw material. Incredibly important raw material — you can’t create a final image you love without the composition and exposure and choices at the time of capture spot on — but raw material nonetheless. Not finished. Not yet conveying what I want them to convey, feeling how I want them to feel. Not yet ready to share with the world.

This was an incredibly important realization for me to make. It’s a dramatic shift from where I used to be; where I thought I was. I’ve been learning photography for 12+ years but I’ve only used Lightroom for 1 year. I had no idea how integral it had become to my process. But because I now better understand my process, I can more intentionally express myself through my images. I can more intentionally tailor what I do to get the end result I want. I don’t have to follow someone else’s process or choices, I can stand up and say, “This is who I am and how I work as an artist.”

How I work right now, at least. It will change. A month from now or a year from now I’ll have some new realization. But right now…

This is who I am and how I work as an artist.

Yeah, that feels good.


How about you? Do you understand your process, and how it helps you create work that expresses yourself? Let’s discuss here in the comments.

Filed Under: The Kat Eye View of the World Tagged With: bicycle, coast, creative process, lightroom, Oregon, post-processing, The Vancouver Gathering

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