Day: May 30, 2012

What does it mean to be creative? I put up hundreds of photos each week and nothing is more interesting to me than to see which ones strike a chord with people, touch them in a particularly clear way. Two days ago, Maria picked a peony out of the garden and put it in a blue vase. I saw it and moved it out into the living room. It struck me as especially evocative – a promising still life. So I took a photo of it and put it up on the website and got a huge response to this photo.

Here was a case in which creativity had a line – Maria saw the possibilities, they touched me in a special way, I decided to photograph and share them. This is a potent example for me of my idea that most people are creative, even if they have not had the chance or will to develop those instincts. This sort of thing is what Maria and I both do for a living. We are always looking for light and color, always trying to capture them. But they are also simple things. Anybody could see this, anybody could have taken the photo. There was no special skill involve beyond seeing the potential and in my case, adjusting for the exposure coming through the window – thanks Christine.

Art used to be run by elites, and elites still see art like painting and photography as something for them, not for the masses. The Internet causes dislocation and chaos everywhere, but it is also a great leveler. For better or worse, we are all artists and writers and publishers now – we have our computers, blogs, tablets, cell phones, browsers, paint and sketch programs, games, video cameras, DSLR’s point-and-shoots.

Digital photography brought an amateur like me to photography, and millions of others as well. It has brought Maria to videos, photos, blog writing, and influenced her text, color and art. Creative is, to me, internal, not external. Classes and teachers can be helpful, but creativity does not come from them, only the skills to hone and develop it. Creativity is the light inside of each of us, released. It is subjective, more so all the time. Your idea about a good photo is just as good as mine, as many people are finding when they try it.  Creativity is the spark inside of us, I think. It is a universal gift, even if we all used it differently, or not at all.

Just about every day, someone asks me to put up a new video of Simon braying, but I think there are enough videos of Simon braying on You Tube to last awhile. I just don’t like doing the same thing too often.  For me, creativity requires being spontaneous, so I don’t really listen to requests for photos (every day someone asks for more dog photos also), but rather take the photos and videos that seem fresh and interesting to me. This is why I can’t imagine charging for the blog.  One woman squawked on Facebook recently that there were not enough photos of dogs lately. There’s a refund on the way, I happily replied. Head for petfinder.org, there are thousands there. People might think they can tell me what to do if I started doing what I was told. I suppose they think that anyway.

For me this would all get stale fast if I started taking orders for images. And I would get angry quickly enough. I know me.  Still, I understand the impulse.

Simon’s call to life – he brays to me every time I come out of the farmhouse – is certainly stirring. At no point in my life did I imagine having an appreciative donkey bray for me every time I walked outside. Life is refreshing in that way. Simon is perhaps demanding a carrot or cookie, but it does often appear to me that he is expressing his own form of gratitude, of celebration, in that sense a call to life. I doubt he remembers his ill-treatment before coming to the farm or cares much about it – humans need to remember such things, not donkeys – but there is something affirming and celebratory about him and his wondrous bray, which echoes through the valley and can be  heard for miles. He seems to love his life, and he seems to be a very happy creature. Maybe his long period of deprivation has give him this sense of joy. I wonder if our new neighbors will like the bray. In the country, people tend to appreciate things. They will likely get a rooster crowing also.