Determine Your Level of Photographic Creativity

 So you… (not really you but the theoretical you) went out and spent $8.000.00 on a new SLR camera body, ? dozen new lenses with incredible luminosity, a camera bag to carry all these expensive stuff in, several tripods with various heads so you can angle your expensive camera and lenses in any directions and you are ready to take the photographic world by storm. Really… Yeah? We’ll see about that.

The day has arrived and now you're out in the field looking for that first, breathtaking shot, a person, a panorama, an event, a historic moment… the shot that every editor will fight over so they can SLAP YOUR SHOT on the cover of THEIR magazine… The “I am Famous” shot. You spy this beautiful, brightly colored bird flying in and out of a tree and you notice a nest in the tree’s top branches. The mommy bird has an insect in its beak and it is obvious that the insect is destined to become the next protein meal for the little birdie in the nest. You set up your tripod and camera with your expensive zoom lens in an area which gives you a clear view of the nest and you wait patiently for mommy to return to the nest with another insect. After a few minutes she arrives with a huge insect in her beak and lands on a branch a few feet away from the nest. You can hear the little birdie calling and screeching…. you have your shot framed on the nest and you wait patiently for mommy to hop on over into the frame so you can shoot the scene. Your heart is pounding, your eyes are fixed, the adrenaline is racing through your body and the tension is so thick you can cut it with a knife… Suddenly, she comes into the frame and… and… and…. and… CLICK, you’ve got the shot. A deep breath and sigh of relief comes over you because you did it… you got the shot of a mother bird with a bug in its mouth next to a bunch of dried sticks stuck in the crotch of a  tree… WOW… AMAZING… BOOOORING.

This is your typical, “I am a fantastic photographer” amateur shot. Anyone, with a camera, including my great grandmother, with her inexpensive $50.00 camera phone, can take a shot like that. It doesn’t mean that the shot is not good. It’s just not one of those, “pulls me into the scene, makes me wonder, ask questions, WOW, I can’t take my eyes off the shot” kind of a shot.

Now picture the same scenario with the camera strapped six inches away from the nest. The camera has an ultra wide angle lens…even better, the camera has a fish eye lens attached and your shot covers 180 degrees from 20 feet up in the air looking down towards the ground. Objects below are small but still recognizable. Your shot looks like it was taken from the top of a Californian sequoia. The mother bird’s proportions are distorted and in your photograph she appears to be as big as a pterodactyl. The bug in her beak looks like some creature from out of a Sci-fi movie and the baby bird is as huge as an Andean Condor…. OK, now that is something an editor might want to put on the cover of his wildlife magazine.

Creativity comes in all different styles and sizes. The photographic subject choice, even mundane things can be photographed and turned into dramatic scenes using a little creativity and imagination. Everyone has this ability. It is a question of how far you are willing to push the limits. Great photographer spend hours and many times they spend days out in the field setting up and then waiting for the perfect moment to click that shutter. I remember a National Geographic documentary where Andy Casagrande, a cinematographer for National Geographic, spent 3 weeks living out of a 4 x 4 in the hot, African savanna sun, trying to get video and photographs of a mother cheetah chasing down prey for herself and three cubs. He never did get video or the photographs he wanted to get. Other cinematographers and photographers have spent countless hours hanging from ropes, dangling from cliffs, buried knee deep in mud and freezing in sub zero temperatures just so we, the viewing public, can watch a few seconds of edited video on our TV screens or read a few words and see a few photographs in a magazine. As a rule of thumb, one hour documentaries which I produce for TV, require a minimum of 30 hours of recorded video footage and in some cases more. Documentaries for National Geographic require hundreds of hours and thousands of photographs before they are aired or published. Being creative is also pushing the limits of your own ability and never settling for routine. Constantly challenging yourself and never being satisfied with the results are a part of the growth and evolution, not only as a photographer but also as a human being. Every photographer thinks his work is great but the real test is what the public thinks. They are the ones who will inevitably  judge and decide whether you fail or succeed.