There are many ways of how to define creativity and its finest results. It probably depends on how you look at it, but I like the idea that each creative output is a product of motivation, skill and taste. Motivation keeps you going, it makes you (wanna) do stuff and it is pretty clear that without the motivation any creativity is nonexistent. Then you must have skills. You must know your devices as well as you possibly can. Despite the obvious talent, it would be impossible for Elton John to compose a song without mastering the piano. Or Michelangelo to sculpt something like David without being really good with stone. This is why every art form calls for constant and fanatic practice.
A lot of people are motivated. They desperately want to do art or science. Some of them learn the skills. But very few have the taste to know in which direction aim their creativity. Taste can be understood as a set of values that guide you trough the process of creation. Even in most trivial of situations you can spot the lack of taste immediately. There are many people who clearly have enough clothes, but they combine them in the wrong way. It is not the lack of clothes that makes them look like clowns, it is the lack of taste. It is the lack of taste to blame that many technically good painters never go beyond what it is sold on the beaches or postcards. It is the same for photography. They are motivated, they have the technical skill, but they don't know what is really good so they aim too low.
So how to acquire a good taste? In my experience this happens with constant criticism. You must put your work under the scrutiny of yourself and others. You might get hurt, but that is a good thing. Bad feelings fade away, the lesson remains. You must also see and judge as many other works as you possibly can (this doesn't necessarily involve informing your peer about the opinion). If you are an architect you should devote at least some part of your every day to review other architects' work. When I was a freshman, a very dear very professor said: "A day without looking at an architectural magazine is a lost day." Today I know how right he was. By looking at magazines you develop a clear taste of what is good and what is not. You later apply that taste to your own work. Without the taste your motivation and skills are simply misguided into wrong directions. And this goes not just for design or arts, it is true for every activity. Because of that many good works of art are very simple and resourceful. You don't need a huge budget to create something original. You don't need many resources. But you need a good taste for it.
Recently I had to defend my portfolio (most of it can be seen here) and a member of the jury asked me to separate digital photos from those taken on film. I did so, and then I explained the difference in paradigms of shooting on each medium. Not that film was expensive, the mistakes were! I would gladly spend three rolls of Velvia or Portra VC if I knew I had The Photo, but the price of failing was a bit to high to act this way. I had to think a lot more so I killed many ideas in the start. As a result certain subjects or approaches were considered unworthy of photographing. Not anymore on digital and that explains the explosion of diversity seen on Flickr and elswhere.
"But don't you think that rapid and thought-less shooting [common on digital] leaves you with photographs of lesser quality?" the jury asked.
"Perhaps," I answered. "Perhaps that is what happened to me in the first weeks after I made the switch from analogue to digital. But then one has to find a balance between the paradigms of film-like planing or contemplation and high-speed-intuitive action (believed to be common on digital)."
That is not a bad answer, however, it is not an accurate one. What I should answer is the following: Rapid shooting is just a technique. It has been popular in sports photography for decades (even on film) because it is the only way to ensure a good photograph. It doesn't mean sports photographers are careless, they need this technique. Often they do a lot of thinking and planing in advance (before the competition). They examine the light, camera angles, athletes' motion (etc) and set up their work flow hours before the actual exposure. Then they shoot their thing. This video might be a good example.
Rapid shooting is essential to get a good photograph.
In landscape or fine art photography rapid shooting is often no advantage. No matter what medium (digital or film), photos have to be well composed and properly lit. And there the "film paradigm" is still well practiced on digital.
A technique/medium should not be confused with the attitude! If one has a careless attitude towards the art and photography, one remains ignorant on film as well as on digital. But if one seeks for perfection, the medium doesn't matter.
After two years being almost strictly on digital cameras I am having some sort of a an emotional phase. I miss film!!! I bought a couple of rolls of really high-end film and rediscovered the magic of it. Better than digital? You be the judge.
On top on what I wrote here, lets see is what it is already happening now. Press agencies are often taking local photographers instead of sending their top guys on an assignment. Equipment and knowledge got a lot more accessible, so you can have a photographer on the place who is good enough and you don't need to send an American or German photographer there (to Africa, for example). This is of course a lot cheaper.
I think this will go one step further. Not only that the local photographers will contribute more, amateurs will too. I don't mean just amateur photographers who buy fancy cameras and make their own little exhibitions, I mean people who don't have a clue about photography. People like my dad who has a camera in his cell phone. These people are all around and they carry cameras along with them. They can record material that was never recorded before, simply because they are there when it happens and some PRO photographer wasn't. So why not submit that to the press? Just for the fun of it.
And just to be clear; every broken window in a local shop doesn't have to be photographed by a professional. Most of trivial news can be easily visualized by random folks who just happened to be there. But when something big happens, well, then you need the top guys. You can't send an amateur to cover the Olympics, can you? Or Obama's inauguration. Perhaps if press saves some money on trivial events with the amateur contributions, PRO's can be payed better on big stuff. That would probably call for less photo journalists.
Some other photographers took a different path. They make really good stories on their own (as freelancers) and then they try to sell it or get a grant. In Perpignan there were quite many who work this way. Ed Ou, for example, made a story about victims of radiation in Kazahstan. But I think that this model doesn't really create incentives for people to join this profession unless the rewards are great (which they aren't).
Every crysis ends up with something new invented. The old model not being fit for the circumstances anymore is the reason we got into trouble in the first place. Sometimes it takes a generation to change, but often we don't have that much time. We'll see how this turns out.
In every field of human creativity you usually have two separate domains of creation; professional and the amateur. In many cases the amateurs are inspired by the professionals but pro's don't care much about the amateurs. In many cases. But not in all cases.
Especially in music many professional composers and musicians study native and folk music for inspiration. In painting something similar happened in late 19th century with Paul Gauguin who studied "primitive art" and childish drawings in order to connect with the primal instincts of our painting skills.
But there better examples. In astronomy pro's and amateurs work hand in hand. Ever since the equipment (telescopes, ccd chips, etc) became ever-more available, amateurs take a huge part in collecting all sorts of data that is impossible for the professionals to handle. Amateurs may not have the largest telescopes at their hand (quite frankly, oftentimes you don't need large telescopes), but they have lots and lots of time, and more importantly, they are in great number, so their contribution sums up. For the last 20 years a lot of asteroids and other small bodies within our solar system were discovered by the amateurs. Simply put; you just have to continuously photograph small portions of the sky and search for "stars" that move in relation to the others. Whatever moved may be a candidate for an asteroid or a comet. Detection of such things takes a lot of time which is something that you just might not have if you work on a large professional telescope (there are "better" things to do there). This kind of research is ideal for the amateurs, and professional community benefits greatly from the work of committed hobbyists.
Until recently professional photography and filmography didn't bother much for the amateurs. And many of the old time pro's still look down upon the amateur creativity. But I think we should be more careful. Amateurs of today can have almost the same kind of equipment as professionals and in these terms there is almost no distinction left. Sometimes you will see a bunch of amateurs with Canon EOS 1DS mkIII . Dedicated amateurs are no longer different in that respect.
But they do different things. Since they don't have responsibility towards the client, they can try and do so much more. The digital revolution lowered the price of failure to almost zero, so people try really absurd things and many times the results are surprising. Just take a look at this:
Can you imagine somebody spending 500 EUR worth of film for this? You know, just to have some fun with a rotten apple? Of course not. We had "better" things to do with film. The price of failure was high and people didn't dare to try out these crazy ideas so nothing original was never produced. When the price of failure is high you stick to the old and well tested methods, of course you perfect them, but you don't innovate. If you see the collection of what we did on film, you may see a lot of perfection but not much innovation.
Things now changed and if one looks at Flickr, one may find the craziest things possible. People just experiment as they never did before. And I believe that professionals can learn from them. To often pro's don't have the time or energy to do this sorts of tests, but amateurs do. And pro's can learn from them a lot. There is no reason to look down upon them. We'd be all better of working hand in hand.
CLAP is a video we did in our Multimedia workshop at a youth summer camp during the last 7 days. Our inspiration was the morning rehearsal of the UMMI orchestra (with Vlado Batista as a conductor). The most fun thing about that orchestra is that we all participated, no matter our previous experience in music or sound.
This is how our playing looked and sounded like on the first day:
Of course we got a lot better ofer time and our final concert was really cool (videos and sounds will follow).
But our job (Multimedia workshop) was to visualize those sounds. We took a short piece from the second rehearsal and after 6 days of brainstorming and hard labour, this is what we have to offer to the world. Enjoy!
The sounds were recorded with Olympus LS-10, photos and video with Canon EOS 5D mkII.
I have always had some love for the sounds. Perhaps it is driven by the same momentum that keeps me in photography; to document stuff before it dissolves in time, and perhaps even to build upon it. In the past years I have spent quite some money on an audio recording hardware. I recorded several concerts, even an orchestral one and learned a lot about how the sound works. Even my thesis at the university was acoustical, not visual. So it was kind of late for me to buy this gadget (Olympus LS-10). I mean; I should have had it for years. It would save me a lot of frustration. I could have recorded a lot more than I had.
But anyways, here it is. Yesterday we had a stormy night, so I put it out on a dry window and recorded an hour or so. Then I selected the best parts, recorded some dull guitar chords over it and viola! I put it in a form of a video, because it is easier to upload, consume and credit it that way. I hope you like it
I'm having this camera for almost two moths now. It brought me a lot of joy when working in extremely low light conditions, but it also drives me mad everywhere else. Sometimes my spoiled self wants to slam it onto the ground. Most of my anger is adressed at disastrously slow and inacurate autofocus. It's really a crap even with the best of Canon's L lenses.
So, after some consideration, here is a list of what I miss about this model (beside a decent autofocus). I believe most of these features are already supported by the existing hardware, it would just take a minute or two to write a better firmware... (any voluntears???). Here it goes:
- 720p HD video It has VGA (640x480) and full 1080p HD. Why not something inbetween, like 720p???
- Timed shooting How great would it be to have automated shooting for timelapses (Nikon has it!)? With Canon it is possible only with ultra expensive remote controler.
- In-camera RAW-to-JPG conversion Let's say you're on a long trip and you need to save some space on your card, so you convert less important shots from raw to jpg, possibly with some minor editing... It is still an amateur camera and this is more or less an amateurish request, right?
- In-camera flagging, rating, etc... Again, you are on a long trip. You made several thousand photos (probably Over 9000!!1!). It is painful enough to think how much time would it take to make a selection of all the material you did, not to mention how painful it is actually to do it. Why not flag a few photos on a train??? I think pros would also apreciate this function...
- Sound recording Why not record sound only? It has the mic, right? It could serve for taking notes (works well on pro cameras) or just to record some ambient sound to go along with the slides.
So, anyone there to write a couple of lines of code for that?
When I photograph people, many of them find me annoying. Really. And I can't really blame them; I am not happy with just one or two photos. I must take them at least 50. But there are profound reasons why.
First of all; I wanna make sure that the person looks good on my photograph. In order to achieve that two things must happen; the person must be adopted on my shooting (for that I must be there a while) so that he or more often she is relaxed enough to look natural. And a larger amount of photos must be taken in order to statistically ensure a technically good photograph (in terms of eye blinking, expression, and also focus, sharpness, composition, etc).
But there is a deeper reason and it lies in the way I think about photography. Usually, when I'm in the zone, I'm not even thinking about the object of my shooting. I am literally making the photograph, not taking it. I am thinking in 2D. I am producing a 2-dimensional pattern of our visual communication. At least I try to. The people or objects are just grand means to achieve that. So even if I did 20 photos with you, I might have a new message to deliver or a new emotion to visualize. And that has nothing (or little at best) to do with documenting your physical appearance. For that, one or two photos would surely be enough. But for producing items of visual communication, I could work with a singe model for years... I try to find the next level of portraiture where models are actually actors (very much like in movies) who co-author my story. That story can be also be documentary, but not necessarily. And this is also why I started to systematically study other fields of art like painting, movie-making, sculpting... I am especially interested in works of Asian artists who are supposed to have a bit different way of thinking than us, Europeans. I read and heard a lot about that from many neurological sources, it is a bit too complex to go into it rihgt now, but there are great things there to discover!
This is my latest lecture from the conference in Rogaška Slatina, where we discussed the problems with the development of creativity in schools. My lecture was done in collaboration with dr. Mojca Juriševič. The deal was that I present some more practical problems and solutions and she backs them up with research data from the psychological department. This formula worked really well and I hope we'll do that again sometime
Unfortunately this is in Slovenian again... This lecture is shorter so I might find some time to translate it, but since it is licensed with CC license (by-nc), you can download it and add subtitles
I renamed my compact flash cards after great thinkers of our history. With time (and new cards) other names will follow; Dante, Leonardo, Euler, van Gogh...
Hello again! I try to be as bussy as possible (living is expensive these days). Last week I was on a workshop in Dragonja with my multimedia class from Koper primary school (the team that produced this). We spent 3 days in forest near the Dragonja river and tried to make something out of it.
The idea was to use disposable film cameras. I figured that with complicated cameras a lot of time is lost to actually manage the camera and not much is left for creativity and content issues. With disposable cameras you don't have to worry about the settings, you just take pictures! They are amazing tools!
So this is what we made. The story is told trough the eyes of a frog which for once in its life wishes to see the home pond not from the "frogs perspective", but from the "birds eye view". The frog swims trough the pond, escapes the hands of a hunter, climbs on a rock, takes the view and jumps back down. But the jump was miscalculated.
I decided to hit the road and go on a tour around high-schools in western Slovenia to promote UMMI summer camps and in doing so speak about issues with creativity and giftedness. My main points are:
- giftedness is a property of mind which has to be carefully nurtured, otherwise skills will diminish to average at best, - creativity is not a property of mind, it is a way of thinking. It is seeing each thing afresh and approaching problems with playfulness, courage and bravery, - creative and gifted people are often misunderstood, hence they feel alone, - but they are not!
I am recording every lecture and I shall publish the best version ASAP. After each lecture I try to encourage debate about this issues to get some feedback. It is a great experience and there is still 5 places to go!
For the last two months I have been visiting Idrija on saturdays to teach perspective drawing and some basic graphic at their highschool. I must admit it was (and still is) a wonderful experience. People are very nice and the town is beautiful. Today I decided to stay a bit and hang around for there was some kind of eco-event going on (promoting recycling, green energy...) with demonstration of dog education program.
This should be our final version of animation made on Koper Primary School under the program of Multimedia Workshop. The movie tells the story of our jurney on the tower of the main curch in town. The technique used is simply drawing line by line with chalk on a standard blackboard in school. A lot of time was used in postproduction to normalize photos from different classrooms and light conditions.
Blackboard animation - Final version from Nikio on Vimeo.
Click below for translation of the captions.
Senior Prom is a bit different in Slovenia than it is in US of A or somewhere else. Here only seniors have it and the whole event follows quite strict protocol. In the official part students (have to) dance dances of quadrille which are concluded by Wiener Walzer. After that boys take their mothers for a formal dance, then girls their fathers and at the end there is a dance of students with professors. For many students this is their first serious excercise in grace, protocol and formal night life. Which is fine.
This year I was picked to photograph the even. The whole thing is simply too big and too important for one man only. So I had to find someone to help me. The way I see business is that you must surround yourself with people who are better than you. That will put your work to the next level. Considering that, I had only one name in mind - Andrej Korenč, several times awarded photographer and a good friend of mine. Above you can see a small selection of our work. We hope you like it.
I bought a couple of rolls of really high-end film and rediscovered the magic of it. Better than digital? You be the judge.
WIDGETIZE