Tim Gruber and Jenn Ackerman use both photography and video to tell stories for editorial and commercial clients. 
We were in DC last week to shop our new books around. (Thanks for the hospitality Kleinfeld!) One of our meetings was with Michael Wichita at AARP. Who despite having to leave the next day for NYC, spent the majority of his night engaging us in a great discussion about everything from photo books to dream assignments. In talking about dream assignments, Michael asked if there was anything we could work on what would it be? Perhaps you have a dream assignment that you have been cooking up for awhile, but it left me stumped and had me thinking about it for the rest of the night.
Only a little later did it dawn on me that the things I’m working on now are my dream assignments. Nobody assigned them to me. Nobody is telling me how to shoot it and by when. Both projects I’m working are very personal. They are about places and people I care about deeply. Both are rooted deep with family history and a desire to make sure my kids have a visual reference to their past. I’m able to work at my own pace. Shoot what I want when I want. The only constraints or weight I feel from these projects are self-generated.
I’ve also realized that I feel most at home with my Hasselblad. For some reason I don’t feel the pressures I do when I’m shooting with a 35mm. My head isn’t polluted with thoughts of working moments or layers. With the Hasselblad my definition of a moment has shifted. I’m no longer chasing things. I’ve slowed down and let things find me.
Thanks Michael for helping me realize that my dream assignments are in fact the personal projets that I am working on right now. I hope that as I pursue new personal projects that this continues to be a trend.
What is your dream assignment?
A new image for The Island project.
If you haven’t noticed my blog has taken a backseat to living life.
I hate resolutions. I’d rather just act and do what needs to be done. So with that in mind I’ve made a point of making this a year of tangibles.
Savoring human interaction, basking in afternoon light, watching the dolphins swim, walking til my calves ache, collapsing to the seductive smell of a new book, saying hello to strangers, a messy and well used kitchen and so much more.
Basically a life with less noise. I’ve become a slave to technology and while I enjoy all the benefits it brings me the pitfalls have had me longing for a disconnect.
Seth made a great point that’s worth reinforcing for photographers and all creatives alike and that’s just to do it. Make it happen. By now you’ve probably had enough time to break your resolutions for the new year so disregard that and just get out there and act on an impulse. Try it just once. Don’t over think it. Just get out and see what happens.
I gave it a try all last week and today again. I went out to explore with my Hasselblad. What I found was a landscape of possibilities and if I’m lucky(we’ll see when I get the film back) a few images I can add to a project I’m working on.
The hardest part is starting something.
One key element of a successful artist: ship. Get it out the door. Make things happen.
The other: fail. Fail often. Dream big and don’t make it. Not every time, anyway.
Tim got his ideas out the door, to the people who decided what to do with them. And more often than not, they shot down his ideas. That’s okay. He shipped.
These principles might help in guiding your work. I know they gave me something to think about especially the few below. Read the rest of the principles here at 10 Principles That Might Make Your Work Better or May Make It Worse
A few of the principles to get you thinking:
2. Consistent voice is more important than consistent style.
Voice is about what you say. It’s content. Style is about what you’re wearing. It’s aesthetics. The prior informs the latter, not the other way around. Clothes don’t make the man. They don’t make your work either.
3. Does it have heart?
If it does, make it. If it doesn’t, why spend the time on something that doesn’t have spirit?
8. Being too comfortable is dangerous.
Most creatures die in their sleep. Keep moving, or get eaten. The only things you should be absolutely comfortable with in your creative process are your tools.
9. There is nothing keeping you from doing the sort of work that you wish.
What do you want? It’s a hard, yet crucial question. We all do creative work to get happy. It’s why we let it beat us up, and it’s why we keep crawling back to it. Figure out precisely what you want, and realize that if no one will pay you to make it, you can still make it for yourself. And you still win, because you’re happy.
I’ve been a huge fan of Twyla Tharp and her use of project boxes for things she’s working on. Here’s a brief primer on the idea from Twyla if you’re not familiar with it:
The Project Box. Everyone has his or her own organizational system. I start every dance with a box, the kind you can buy at Office Depot for transferring files. I write the project name on the box, and as the piece progresses I fill it up with every item that went into the making of the dance. This means notebooks, news clippings, CDs, videotapes of me working alone in my studio, videos of the dancers rehearsing, books and photographs and pieces of art that may have inspired me.
The box documents the active research on every project. For a Maurice Sendak project, the box is filled with notes from Sendak, snippets of William Blake poetry, toys that talk back to you. There are separate boxes for everything I’ve ever done. This archive provides material to call on, to use as a spark for invention.
The box makes me feel that I have my act together even when I don’t know where I’m going yet. It represents a commitment. The simple act of writing a project name on the box means I’ve started work. The box also connects me to a project. It is my soil. I feel this even when I’ve back-burnered a project: My box may be away on a shelf, but I know it’s there.
Most important, the box means I never have to worry about forgetting. One of the biggest fears for a creative person is that some brilliant idea will get lost because you didn’t write it down and put it somewhere safe.
The purpose of the project box also has to do with efficiency and ease of work. A writer with a good storage and retrieval system can write faster. She isn’t spending a lot of time looking things up, scouring her papers, and patrolling other rooms at home wondering where she left that perfect quote. It’s in the box.
The Problem:
For years I’ve been struggling with keeping my own idea boxes, quotes I like, photos I’ve torn out of magazines and other misc creative snippets organized. My ideas and things are scattered across moleskins, random notebooks, multiple text documents, emails to myself, moving boxes, rubbermaid totes, a del.i.cious account, bookmarks in books and on and on. Being a nomad for the last few years of my life having physical boxes just isn’t practical for me. For the most part I didn’t have a system when it came to organizing my things; it was and still is a creative disaster.
Solution:
Evernote.
Slowly thanks to Evernote I’ve been working to change that. I signed up for the free(there’s also a premium version) service of Evernote and downloaded the app for my Mac and iPhone. I’ve had the app on my iPhone for months but never really used it. The other day out of necessity I finally gave it a shot. Jenn and I have been holding little mini workshops and the last one was a marketing workshop with a focus on defining our list of ideal clients. I was paging through past Communication Arts Photography and Advertising Annuals looking for ad agencies working on projects I like and projects that might be a good fit for my way of shooting. My problem was that I wanted to have a visual documentation of the ad agencies and the work they commissioned. If I didn’t care about preserving my annuals I could just rip out the photos, but seeing as I enjoying flipping through ‘em and at 24 bux it’s not exactly like ripping a photo out of a free weekly. I needed to a find a solution that visually allowed me to document the work and the ad agencies that did the campaign.
I was able to quickly flip through my annuals and with my iPhone take photos of the work I liked. From the iPhone app I was able to sync my snapshots to my Evernote account and within seconds I had a visual archive of potential clients tagged, cataloged and all indexed in an easy place to find them. The killer part is that Evernote has ability to search beyond just simple text in a document. It can search for text in images. I’m not sure how it does it, but it’s really helpful. So not only do I have a visual archive of creative inspiration it’s an image archive that’s searchable beyond simple text.
There are a million other uses for Evernote, but others have covered that a lot better than I could. See these few posts for more uses: How to Use Evernote to Create the Ultimate Post Conference Reference Guide and 14 Practical Ways to Use Evernote
Either way give it a look if you’re looking for a way to visually organize your ideas and inspirations. As a photographer I couldn’t think of a more useful productivity/organizational app.
Here’s an ad campaign I cataloged in Evernote that I liked and it shows an example of Evernote’s ability to search an image for text.
A screenshot of my photo inspiration notebook in Evernote. Any images I come across that I like I throw in this inspiration notebook.
Read more from Twyla in her article titled Why Creativity’s a Habit and Everyone Can Learn It.
Keep this in mind the next time you’re pricing your work.
Legend has it that Pablo Picasso was sketching in the park when a bold woman approached him.
“It’s you — Picasso, the great artist! Oh, you must sketch my portrait! I insist.”So Picasso agreed to sketch her. After studying her for a moment, he used a single pencil stroke to create her portrait. He handed the women his work of art.
“It’s perfect!” she gushed. “You managed to capture my essence with one stroke, in one moment. Thank you! How much do I owe you?”
“Five thousand dollars,” the artist replied.
“B-b-but, what?” the woman sputtered. “How could you want so much money for this picture? It only took you a second to draw it!”
To which Picasso responded, “Madame, it took me my entire life.”
Read more on charging by the project or the hour.
Came across this neat letter dating back to 1973 from Disney legend Ward Kimball to a young fan who wanted to be an animator.
Some solid no frills advice in there.
A few highlights:
What I am trying to say is that becoming an animator is a growth process that involves basic curiosities for all things, because man, animation is just not making things move, it is THINKING, THINKING, THINKING! You can’t know enough about everything. Curiosity is the key word. See everything! Do everything!
Learn from others, BUT DON’T COPY THEM! Try to retain your individualism while learning the basic rules. Don’t become dogmatic because you’re going to change your mind about what you like and what you dislike hundreds of times before you’re thirty! This will happen if you develope your imagination along with your curiosity.
You can read all the animation books in the world but learning the art has to be done while doing.
Paul Graham pumped out a nice bit of copy for the Yale MFA photography graduation book entitled: Photography is Easy, Photography is Difficult
Whether photography is old hat or you’re a fresh grad the article has something for everyone who has ever taken a camera to their eye.
A taste:
And hopefully I will carry on, and develop it, because it is worthwhile. carry on because it matters when other things don’t seem to matter so much: the money job, the editorial assignment, the fashion shoot. Then one day it will be complete enough to believe it is finished. Made. Existing. Done. And in its own way: a contribution, and all that effort and frustration and time and money will fall away. It was worth it, because it is something real, that didn’t exist before you made it exist: a sentient work of art and power and sensitivity, that speaks of this world and your fellow human beings place within it. Isn’t that beautiful?
If you’ve followed my blog for any length of time you know that fear and failure are topics I blog about often.
fear.less is an online magazine that will be launching soon that has notable people address the issue of overcoming fear. I signed up for their magazine awhile back and today I received a PDF about Platon facing and overcoming his fears.
I’d post the PDF, but it seems like something they are using as incentive to get people to sign up so I’m not sure they’d be happy with me posting it so instead I’ll share a few highlights with you.
It’s a great article with a lot of it resonating with me as I work to get established.
A few quotes and some of my random thoughts thrown in:
In the beginning, everything is hard, no matter what profession you choose. I was always obsessed with the idea when I was younger of “How did other people make it?” When you’re a student, you feel you’re on the other side of things, that there’s this beautiful, imaginary castle where everybody goes when they’ve “made it.” I finally learned “made it” doesn’t actually exist; it’s just an idea you look up to when you’re beginning. When you’re on the tracks, it’s the continuous journey that makes a difference, not the end result. The end result is when you kick the bucket.
I’m guilty of doing this all the time. I’ll hear someone speak and one of the first questions that will pop into my little head is; How’d you make it and what advice would you give to someone starting out? Unfortunately or fortunately depending on your outlook there isn’t a formula and everyone’s journey is unique. Although when you’re on the beginning of that journey it often becomes easy to lose sight of the road and you start to feel like you’re playing the lottery rather than building a career.
I came to realize that it’s actually irrelevant how anybody else does it if you’re looking for a formula to apply to yourself. The truth is, everyone’s journey is different, everyone’s personality is different, and everyone’s talent or weaknesses are different. It’s more important to really get to know yourself and understand who you are, understand your Achilles’ heel and your strengths, which can often be completely unrecognized in the beginning.
Your instincts are your true guide, and a lot of young people are bullied into not listening to their instincts because they don’t fit into the protocol of the establishment. It’s your instincts and emotions backed with resilience, drive and confidence that make you empowered. If you keep pushing through, eventually you break the ice.
Like a wolf lurking in the shadows waiting to pounce on the weak and injured self-doubt lingers waiting to paralyze you into fear. Trust your heart and gut to pull you through.
I went in 36 times in three years with my portfolio before they finally gave me a job. I think I showed every single person my work, even the receptionist. I was just so committed to getting in there that, I think eventually, they just felt sorry for me and wanted to shut me up. You have to have the mentality that you won’t take “no” for an answer and look at what you’re aiming for at that moment in time and see how to make it happen.
I’m experiencing this first hand trying to get meetings with editors. It’s a process that could easily have you waving the white flag after the first day of not hearing back from any of the editors you contacted. You continue to push on to the second day of contacting editors, which blurs into day three and still nothing. Finally by day four an editor sends you a note and says they’d love to see your work and your hope is renewed. You must stay the course.
There’s no “arrival,” because you’ve always got the next step on the journey. Young people need to understand that, they need to feel that. When you’re intimidated by the establishment or successful people, or you feel like you’re not worthy in some ridiculous way, then you’ve got to remind yourself that they’re on the same journey that you are, and believe me, they’re just as frightened of you as you are of them. You’re young, you’re talented, you have a burning energy they don’t have, you have no history, no skeletons in the closet, you’re just liberated.
You can’t hide what you’re really feeling, especially from me, because I’m good at catching it. In fact, I’m looking for it.
It’s not about achieving or winning or acquiring something. It’s more visceral than that. It goes back to “Who am I? Am I happy? Am I really living?
What happens as a photographer when you find yourself facing a creative block?
We all face them at some point in our careers. What’s most interesting perhaps is how we as creatives choose to individually fight our way through. One of my professors would stress the importance of shooting your way out of it. Others would stress just putting the camera down for awhile until the passion resurfaces.
Below are a few choice quotes from a writer’s perspective on dealing with ideas and blocks:
the hard fact is that words are emotional things, and emotions shift. They grow. They grow impossible. They move away. There is a tide in creativity, and until you are familiar with its ebb and flow, it is hard to look at that distant sea and believe that it will ever come close again.
So I don’t do “inspiration” or “blocks”. I just do “work” and hope for the best. Some days the geese stay geese, but often enough I get a bit of swan action; a still reflection, a glimpse of white. The trick is to keep yourself open to the moment. The trick is to keep yourself vulnerable and true, and this can be tiring, after a while. It can hurt – quite literally. So there will be times when you have to retire a little, and shut down.
But there is no need to panic. It does come back. One day it comes back. The tide turns. The words mean something again, and they manage to stick to the page. The right shell is on the beach, the light is beautiful and just for you. As you turn into the wind and head for home, the swan itself shits on your coat. And there, standing by the car, is another human being.
Here are a few choice quotes from Stephen King’s book called On Writing:
Talent renders the whole idea of rehearsal meaningless; when you find something at which you are talented, you do it (whatever it is) until your fingers bleed or your eyes are ready to fall out of your head. Even when no one is listening (or reading, or watching), every outing is a bravura performance, because you as the creator are happy. Perhaps even ecstatic.
I also recently finished reading Malcolm Gladwell’s book called the Outliers(read it if you haven’t it’s worth your time) where he breaks down the careers of people who have been successful in their given professions. One of his arguments is that these people, while having some natural talent have also devoted 10,000 hours to their given craft. How much are you willing to devote to your love of photography?
The scariest moment is always just before you start.
I know for me this is true. My head clouds with self-doubt. Often the moment is enough to even keep me from starting or moving ahead with a project. Just this week I started shooting a personal project again that I started months ago. People saying no always served as a roadblock and they still do, but today I plan to stay the course and not let a few hurdles sidetrack my curisoty or my goal.