Sunday 22 January 2012

Stucture helps creativity... ?

I have been struggling quite a bit with this course, creatively that is - techniques and basic knowledge are not the problem. Not only have I also had the issue of an increased workload due to staffing problems eating away at my free time, photographically awful weather,malfunctioning and just plain broken hardware and the other less savoury vagaries of life keeps getting in the way... but worst of all has been my approach to the whole "study" element.

I have spent a lot of years accumulating photographic knowledge and techniques, initially from books and magazines , working with and talking with other photographers, studying other peoples work in books and at exhibitions and in latter years internet sites. Totally unstructured and apart from taking and passing an A level course in the 90's , I have just been free to do it my way. All of a sudden following the course structure started causing me problems... I normally jump around doing things by how it feels best. Following the course structure  I have had to stop and reconsider and in some case try to "forget". It's been hard.

It has been feeling to me that it was stifling my creativity... as in I have been struggling to shoot images, when I would normally know what instinctively to shoot. I am having to stop and consider... which wasn't working at first but now it is!  Considering what I am going to shoot, and how I am going to do it is becoming easier and not causing me as many issues as it was at the start. I can now slow myself and follow the exercises without leaping ahead in my usual "grasshopper on a sunny day approach"; no longer leaping from aspect to aspect of a shoot without considering the direction.

Is this all for the good ? Or is it something to learn then unlearn in the future?





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