Sometimes we hit a creative brick wall. Occasionally we see it coming… a feeling that we aren’t connecting - or are a little out of phase - with what we want to do. Or what we think we want to do. Other times it comes right out of a little alley in our creative neighborhood and mows us over like yesterdays garbage… sorry. We ‘lose it’ or we simply blank. It happens to the best of us.

I remember reading about Bert Stern simply disappearing one day and walking off into the photographer’s sunset. He reappeared later, but in a different incarnation. A friend of mine who is a brilliant still life shooter just stopped and took up another profession. He loves photography, but it wasn’t providing him the stimulus he needed to be excited. He finds that in the clouds now.

Robert Wright, a wonderful editorial shooter in NY, gives us a rather long blog post on creativity and the challenges of always staying on top of your game. What do we do when we get in a slump? There are ways out of course… and some may be drastic and life changing - but they are options. There is so much to think about here. (And visit his blog for more writing that makes you think.)

No time to shoot-make time - For a while last year and the year before I was beholden to another master for certain days of the week, so I decided, I have fifteen minutes of walk time from the subway to the door, why not use that time, and I did. You will be surprised what you can find, and how late you can be! Mostly I found it put my mind into a state of awareness that I became familiar with and familiar with when it was not active, more importantly. So it carried over into other instances when I was not shooting, I would feel a shift go on, and start to “see” pictures again, so I would register them with an internal “click.” I think this awareness issue is very very important and I will get back to it later.

Too much time to shoot? - lose time - Ok, what do i mean? Simply, you are not doing the OTHER things you need to be doing, like printing, editing, making book dummies, reading about other stuff, going to movies, etc. What the hell is going on! You are human aren’t you?

Stare - Ok so we are told not to stare, it is rude, but that is for normal people. Photographers are not normal. You have to stare. Consider it part of your job. Writers are famous for eavesdropping on conversations to get a feel for the rhythm of language and usage. Staring is our eavesdropping. I’ll wager that if you are stuck or stagnant you have stopped “looking” and part of that is essentially staring. You’ll never know how something looks or more importantly how it might look if you don’t just stare. You have to see how an expression changes, the points inbetween, how the light moves across a surface, how a hand looks, how people sit, stand, run, walk. The reason is that once you have an internal memory of events, you can start to anticipate those events in your photography, and be ready for them. People say about certain pictures, “how did you do that, how did you know that would happen?” and it is easy if you are a student of life, the more you see, the more you understand what might happen, and the more you can be ready for it. So if you are stuck, consider just looking for a while, taking your time to stare and wonder.

You can read the rest here…

And see Roberts images here…