Lessons I Didn’t Learn In Photo School 61-65

This Week’s LIDLIPS

61. Humor contributes to global warming.

62. Creativity and curiosity are fraternal twins.

63. The more I look at my work, the less I like it.

64. It used to be that photography was just another way to make a mark on a piece of paper.

65. Photography is proof that Darwin was right.

Lessons I Didn’t Learn In Photo School 61–65

61. Humor contributes to global warming.
While we come in many shapes, sizes and colors, it’s evident that the smile is universal. As a photographer, use this knowledge with impunity. Pointing a lens at someone can be intimidating – on both ends. If you find a way to connect, the intimidation will evaporate. Crack a joke. Make fun of yourself. Do it knowing that we can’t laugh without smiling.

62. Creativity and curiosity are fraternal twins.
Creativity and curiosity were born of the same mother. They may look different – but at their core they are the same. You cannot be creative without having a strong curiosity. “If I do this, what will happen?” is at the core of the creative’s journey.  Add spontaneity as a playmate to the pair of twins and you have an explosive mix.

63. The more I look at my work, the less I like it.
When I’m shooting, the photos that I get most excited about are the ones that show me something new or take me to a level I’ve not climbed to before. Yet, the more I look at these images, the less new they become. The more I make these types of images, the less challenging they become. When the images become commonplace, I lose interest and my enthusiasm for them slides. It’s not the photo that’s changed. It’s me. Like a high school crush, when the infatuation is over, my interest moves on. I’ve stopped worrying about this. Time can be a great filter. I’ve come back to my images, sometimes days later and sometimes years later, and found a newly-kindled enthusiasm for what I see. Now, when I look at my work and don’t like what I see, I ask if I’m looking at it too much rather than too little.

64. It used to be that photography was just another way to make a mark on a piece of paper.
For the first 150 or so years of its history, photography was just another way to make a mark on a piece of paper. (Yes, yes – some of the early processes marked up plates of metal or put an image on a piece of glass – but the main medium of delivery was paper.) As novel as it was, for the first many decades of photography’s existence, it wasn’t even a “good” way to mark up a piece of paper. For accuracy, a piece of charcoal or a tray of water colors could deliver more tonal and color fidelity than early photographs. Of course, all that was sorted out. Photography has long been able to deliver images that vividly portray the world around us – still mainly on paper.

65. Photography is proof that Darwin was right.
Today, we are some 30 years short of the bicentennial of photography’s invention. The reign of paper as the delivery medium for photography is collapsing. The Internet has morphed from being the secret realm of academics and soldiers into being the world’s largest public library. Devices like the iPhone and Kindle are replacing books of all types. Now more images are delivered as photons than as droplets of ink. Today’s babies will grow up to remember paper as something they enthusiastically smeared paint on with their fingers in pre-school and little else. Photography is managing to keep pace. Many photographers aren’t.

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