The Creativity Cycle

Photography is a creative endeavour, and over the years of indulging in this pursuit, whether professionally or personally, I have found that there have been times when I felt unable to pick up a camera and thoroughly demotivated with the entire concept of photography as an art form. Of course, if I’m on a commission I have little choice but to push through, but during these times my personal work tends to diminish and I can end up feeling creativity unfulfilled and frustrated at my lack of engagement. I’ve found that these moments can strike at any given time, but often they tend to coincide with times of the year that hold less of my interest such as weeks of rain or even worse, weeks of wall-to-wall sunshine! I’ve also found that I can’t force myself out of these creative troughs and that they dissipate in their own time. However, there are certain things I can do to ease the process and ensure that the dips in my creativity are followed by a productive peak.

Spend less time on social media – It can be hard to foster your own sense of individuality and creativity at the best of times, but with the proliferation of social media it becomes relatively easy to fall down the rabbit hole of other people’s work. This can cause inspiration and help to foster your own work, but it can also serve to demotivate as social media tends to demonstrate the final product and rarely provides a space to perceive all the hard work, preparation and (in some cases) luck that went into creating a particular image. Social media allows you to dip into other people’s worlds, but all you see if the tip of the iceberg and it’s easy to forget that all creatives suffer through self-doubt and demotivation at some point in their artistic endeavours.

Downsize – Both literally and metaphorically. Often I’ll carry a tonne of kit; two camera bodies, three lenses, tripod, filters. That can seem overwhelming when faced with going out on a wander, especially if that jaunt involves anything remotely uphill. Sometimes I just want to have a bit more freedom from the expectations of carrying so much kit and the idea I might have in my head about the conditions or what compositions I might be able to create. For times like this I have a little Sony RX100 Mk V or even just my iPhone. It’s light, packs a punch and I can fit it in my pocket. It gives me the freedom to get closer to the landscape without the weight of expectation and this can do wonders for my creativity.

Get outside your comfort zone – Creatives by nature are hyperaware of their surroundings and their responses to the world. We need stimulus and sometimes if you’ve been photographing the same type of subject matter for a long time it can lose a certain appeal. When this happens I like to switch up the genre I work in and try out something different, such as bird photography in my local park, or swap rural landscapes for my intricate urban scenes. Just challenging myself in this way helps me to reinvigorate my sense of artistic identity and create work that I find personally satisfying.

Creativity is finite and the demands of our information and content driven environment can deplete our internal resources rather quickly. Often these times can be restorative and rejuvenating, leading me to believe that it’s important to embrace the downtime knowing that it’ll have a positive impact on the creativity yet to come.

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(First published in Practical Photography, Feb 2020)

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