Creativity Archives

Crossed Lines / John Gough / Sony a6300

In photography why bother following the rules to be really creative? Why not just throw away the rule book and create beautiful images?

However, breaking up is just so hard to do, and the Rule of Thirds is just so useful that you will never want to dispose of it. It is the first composition rule that most photographers learn, and the one they will use forever.

The Rule of Thirds has been used for centuries. By Leonardo da Vinci for example.

Rule of Thirds

Once you aware of the rule you will notice it countless times each day in photography, film and TV. Rarely does the subject of a photograph happily sit slap bang in the centre. Instead, it is usually more pleasing to place it one third in from the left or the right. Similarly with a horizon. In the centre would just split the image in two, a third from the top or bottom makes the image far more interesting.

Why does it work? It just does. The Rule of Thirds is one of the rules of nature.

Rachel across at Photography Talk has created a great guide on how to make it work in your photography. Check it out.

John Gough

Does persistence beat creativity in the journey to be a better photographer. I guess you need a helping of both, but how do we find our own voice and some originality. These are my notes.

Persistence

This year the number of photographs taken will top over 1.3 trillion. Plus it is growing exponentially. Serious photographers share a phenomenal 350,000 pictures each day on Flickr. How can we ever take pictures that stand out from this enormous crowd.

Trying to be different is not the way according to Finnish-American photographer Arno Minkkinen. Instead the secret to creativity in photography, lies in understanding the operations of Helsinki’s main bus station!

This article in the Guardian explains it all.

Creativity

What he is saying is follow a well trodden path, until you feel you can confidently branch out to be yourself.

This sort of makes sense. If you have read Malcolm Gladwell’s book: Outliers, success he maintains comes with commitment. Bill Gates had access to the mainframe computer at the University of Washington, which was just across the street from his high school. He spent many hours there computer programming. Gladwell has estimated that it requires 10,000 hours spent doing one thing, to build up sufficient expertise to really move on and be successful. He also acknowledges that it also requires a bit of luck.

Arno Minkkinen is kind of saying the same thing, stick in the groove and eventually hard work and persistence leads to creativity.

So what does that mean for us photographers. Well my back of a fag packet calculation puts it at about 50,000 images.