Everyone knows the feeling: you wake up early after an inadequate amount of sleep, you quickly shower and throw on clothes for the day, and then step outside into a sweltering sweatbox known as a summer day. I find that these stretches of extreme weather (either hot or cold) can produce a drought of creativity, which can lead to many frustrations if you’re an artist or musician of any kind. Call it writer’s block, blank-page or empty canvas syndrome, it’s always incredibly frustrating. And it happens to all of us, even the best of us.
Pulitzer Prize-winning composer John Corigliano once said that he still has days where he doubts his ability to compose and calls up his friends to ask them “Will you still like me if I don’t wrote anymore?” I’ve often felt that same feeling when I’m behind the lens. Everything feels as if it’s been done already and I can’t come up with an original thought no matter how hard I try. There are many creativity aids, from free association to oblique strategies, which I will try to cover in another post, but for now, enter Mr. Caponigro:
Reflection I Adagio
© 1999 John Paul Caponigro
The fine art photographer John Paul Caponigro has a website that is virtually brimming with new ways to think about the entire world around you, from color and light to sound and touch, all filtered through the lens of the camera. It’s an inspiring place to spend a few hours, and he has hundreds of PDFs on technique, creativity, and more, all free to download and inspire yourself with. The creativity section has incredible resources about how to expand your creative vision, and how to refine your work so that you have a string of consistency that runs throughout your entire portfolio. I’ve always loved how open and giving of their knowledge many famous photographers are, and I hope that the industry continues in this trend of open knowledge. The [b] School promises to be the same thing for all of us wedding photographers who are keen to learn and share what we have all picked up along the way. After all, there’s no point in having to remap the world if you already have an atlas.
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