What drives photographers and creatives
Posted by Tim Gruber | Filed under creative
Why do we do what we do as photographers and creatives?
Psychology Today has a nice article on what they call The Creative Personality and the ten paradoxical traits of the creative personality.
Perhaps the most important quality, the one that is most consistently present in all creative individuals, is the ability to enjoy the process of creation for its own sake. Without this trait, poets would give up striving for perfection and would write commercial jingles, economists would work for banks where they would earn at least twice as much as they do at universities, and physicists would stop doing basic research and join industrial laboratories where the conditions are better and the expectations more predictable.
I guess this is why we’re not all shooting events and weddings full-time.
Tags: creative, mind, psychology
The photojournalism resume
Posted by Tim Gruber | Filed under promo
I’ve unofficially labeled my spring one of self promotion. My mom, like any good mother keeps reminding me that I need a job career.
I’m in the process of updating my resume. See my resume here on my about page. I briefly entertained the idea of redesigning it, but lack the creative drive right now to make something fresh of it.
Some resume design inspiration
You might find it useful when it comes time to freshen up your resume for that new job prospect or internship.
Tags: creative, design, inspiration, promo, resume
How to be creative.
Posted by Tim Gruber | Filed under Uncategorized
As with everything on creativity take what you need and recycle what you don’t.
How to be creative.
Reminds me a bit of the Incomplete Manifesto for Growth, which I love.
via: Melissa
Tags: creative, internship
Originality Doesn’t Make Great Drama
Posted by Tim Gruber | Filed under Uncategorized
Good read with this post that’s geared to script writers, but just as easily applies to anyone trying to tell stories.
People mistakenly equate rule breaking with originality; they believe originality automatically makes something good; and, they also think being different is the key to success… when, in fact, being good is… and, there is no direct link between being excellent and being original.
My guess is, the guys who developed House understand that it’s great characters and great writing that make great drama… and originality isn’t as important as having a great character
High quality story telling will always triumph over originality
This is something I need to keep in my mind as I plan out my 10 day shoot for my magazine class. In the class I’ll be producing a multimedia package instead of the traditional print piece that most people have in the past. One of my goals for the class is to push myself in terms of multimedia storytelling and while I’d love to produce a charming original piece solid storytelling needs to be at the core of everything I attempt to produce.
Tags: 2read, creative, inspiration, multimedia, school
Innovative Minds Don’t Think Alike
Posted by Tim Gruber | Filed under Uncategorized
I hope everyone enjoyed the holidays. I’m back in Athens after a nice winter break. It feels good to be in Ohio again and I’m anxiously waiting for the start of the quarter.
Being back in Athens means I once again get the NY Times on a daily basis and found this article in the business section to be a good read. Especially in terms of pushing yourself to go beyond the boundaries of what you know and do.
As our knowledge and expertise increase, our creativity and ability to innovate tend to taper off. Why? Because the walls of the proverbial box in which we think are thickening along with our experience.
When it’s time to accomplish a task — open a store, build a house, buy new cash registers, sell insurance — those in the know get it done the way it has always been done, stifling innovation as they barrel along the well-worn path.
When experts have to slow down and go back to basics to bring an outsider up to speed, she says, “it forces them to look at their world differently and, as a result, they come up with new solutions to old problems.”
Newspapers as a whole are still struggling to find what works and what doesn’t with online storytelling and while it leads to a lot of discussion in the community it isn’t leading to a whole lot of compelling storytelling. I’ve contributed my fair share of junk to the mess.
One of my goals for the new year is push myself to move beyond what I know in terms of multimedia and storytelling. We all know how to make safe pictures. Safe pictures only lead in one direction and that’s mediocrity. How can I see this in a new way? We do not see the world as it is. We see it as we are.
More risks. More failure. More discovery.
A blank canvas awaits.
Tags: creative, inspiration, multimedia, photojournalism
FFFFOUND! - Image Bookmarking
Posted by Tim Gruber | Filed under Uncategorized
Came across this site called FFFOUND It’s geared more towards the design end of visual communications, but none the less can be a great source of inspiration for your daily visual push-ups.
The great thing about the site is that it’ll recommended images based on the image you selected. It’s like Pandora except for eye candy. You can read more about it here.
FFFFOUND! is a web service that not only allows the users to post and share their favorite images found on the web, but also dynamically recommends each user’s tastes and interests for an inspirational image-bookmarking experience!!
Photo by:Christian Conrad
Tags: creative, design, inspiration, photography
An incomplete manifesto for growth.
Posted by Tim Gruber | Filed under Uncategorized
This list makes a nice addition to any creative workspace.
Here’s a small sampling of the inspiration I hope to apply to my work and life this school year:
Allow events to change you. You have to be willing to grow. Growth is different from something that happens to you. You produce it. You live it. The prerequisites for growth: the openness to experience events and the willingness to be changed by them.
Go deep. The deeper you go the more likely you will discover something of value.
Capture accidents. The wrong answer is the right answer in search of a different question. Collect wrong answers as part of the process. Ask different questions.
Drift. Allow yourself to wander aimlessly. Explore adjacencies. Lack judgment. Postpone criticism.
Begin anywhere. John Cage tells us that not knowing where to begin is a common form of paralysis. His advice: begin anywhere.
Work the metaphor. Every object has the capacity to stand for something other than what is apparent. Work on what it stands for.
Tags: creative, inspiration, productivity
Peaking into the creative mind.
Posted by Tim Gruber | Filed under Uncategorized
Cecil Vortex features a handful of a interviews with artists on their creative process. Well worth checking out if you’re as fascainated with the creative process as I am.
A few highlights:
The other part is to be ready when they are. Which is to say, a notebook and a writing implement are your passport…But it’s also important to have [these tools] beside your bed so no dream gets lost. - Bob Halman
If you’re sitting down to write a poem, the first thing to do is to forget that you’re sitting down to write a poem. And not to censor yourself in any form when you’re writing. Later on you can censor yourself all you want. It’s called editing, and it’s necessary to take that poem from this originating explosion into the crafted art that’s going to allow it to live alone. - Bob HalmanJoe Strummer said that — you have to have input to have output.
I also came across a book by Annie Lamott called Bird by Bird that should be on my doorstep in a few days thanks to Amazon. The book is a manual on writing and life and one you may want to add to your library if you don’t already have it.
She has a story I love:
Thirty years ago my older brother, who was ten years old at the time, was trying to get a report on birds written that he’d had three months to write. (It) was due the next day. We were out at our family cabin in Bolinas, and he was at the kitchen table close to tears, surrounded by binder paper and pencils and unopened books on birds, immobilized by the hugeness of the task ahead. Then my father sat down beside him, put his arm around my brother’s shoulder, and said, “Bird by bird, buddy. Just take it bird by bird.
