Creative Blocks (and How They Lead to Better Images)

This week's post is another edition of writing on the creative process. This time round, I'm going to briefly explore creative blocks and how I think they lead to better images. The two blocks that I face most often are: 1) getting mired in trying to justify, rationalise, or philosophise my own photographic approach; and 2) setting expectations of what will happen before I go out in the field, only to experience a wholly different environment to what I had envisaged.

I'll say it first, I think reading beyond the limited subject of photography and photo books is a vital skillset to the developing artist. It can broaden the mind and release creativity. And while I love reading philosophy and find that it very often expands my ways of thinking, sometimes I, quite simply, overthink. I get bogged down in being too intentional with my image making and often question everything from my choice of composition to why I am making images in the first place. There is something to be said about using one's intuition as a creative guide to making images. It can be liberating to detach oneself from the reality of your surroundings and just get lost in the act of taking photographs, all the while being at peace knowing the images may not be ‘portfolio grade’ or 'keepers’. In my experience, making these kinds of images lead us between ideas. Following intuition is a bridge in the creative process in which we stumble upon the novel, surprising, and profound. The creative process necessitates creation: things must be made (and inversely, others must disappear). So, in a twist of fate, getting stuck in my own head, forces me to get unstuck. It's all a part of the winding creative process.

“When I set out with an open mind, the world presents itself in all its beauty. "

The photo that spurred my creativity during an otherwise catastrophically wet and windy trip in Scotland.

Setting expectations is something we have all done before, and I feel it often follows a similar trajectory to overthinking. Picture this. I go out to take a pre-visualised image only to find conditions aren't what I had hoped for. After some umming-and-ahhing, maybe even a futile attempt to make the image anyway, the question remains, do I give up and go home? Or do I persevere and see what I can find given the change in circumstance? If I am are courageous enough to take the latter approach, then I will have unwittingly set myself up to photograph without preconceived notions or expectations (or as much as that is possible). Some of my favourite images have been made in this fashion - a rainy, sodden scouting hike in Scotland during the middle of the day produced one of my favourite images of the whole trip. When I set out with an open mind, the world presents itself in all its beauty.

I have found that it is often through the effort of unravelling a creative block that we lead ourselves to discover new ideas and make better images. Growing as a photographer is a process of thinking-by-making. Moving passed creative blocks requires just that, creation.