It happens to (almost) everyone. The pendulum sometimes swings towards enthusiasm, inspiration, and creative work that almost seems to flow all by itself. But pendulums swing both directions, and one of the prices we pay for doing creative work is having to cope with the inevitable dry periods when enthusiasm, inspiration, and creativity are nowhere to be found, periods when you can find yourself questioning your talent and abilities. (I think that one characteristic of “mature” artists is that they understand this cycle and are less likely to be undone by it – both because they are familiar with its existence and because they have learned ways to deal with it.)
I don’t claim to be the definitive expert on this issue, but I have some experience with it in both photography and music. There is much more to be said about this than I have space for here, but I thought I’d share a reply I wrote in a forum where a poster posed the following:
I’m in a dry season, I just wonder what I could do to find the spark again. I just do not seem to find the “mojo”. I get to check the forums once and then but when I want to get out I tend to chose cycling over taking pictures. What are you doing when you just dry up?
I replied:
This will eventually – and periodically, to be honest – happen to anyone who does creative work. There is not a single solution, but there are various things that you can try:
– If it is cycling* season, just focus on cycling right now and come back to photography when you feel like it again. Unless you are relying on the photography for your income, why not? You aren’t doing this because you have to, but because you want to. There is nothing wrong with taking a break. (*Feel free to substitute other activities in place of cycling!)
– Think about combining the two. I used to be a very serious cyclist, and a few years ago – after becoming a former cyclist – I started to get a real kick out of photographing bicycle races. If you are in an area where such things occur, you might give that a try. As a cyclist you may have a special vision for the sport that a non-cyclist might lack.
– Put yourself on a schedule. This isn’t for everyone, but think of it sort of like practicing a musical instrument. Sometimes it is really hard to get started on the practice session, but once you start doing it regularly and get into it the repetition becomes addictive and you actually find that you want to do it. You might decide to produce a photo a week, or visit a photo location once per week, or similar. Commit and then create something on this schedule even if not everything you create is brilliant.
– Find a project. Pick some subject and return to photograph it many times at different times of day and in different conditions. Focus on different aspects of the subject – if in an urban area you might focus on people one time, architecture another, vehicles the next time, and after that shadows and reflections and so forth.
– Photograph a subject that is completely different from what you usually shoot. If you are a sports shooter, go find a landscape. If you shoot landscape, try some informal portraits. Perhaps try street photography or night photography.
– Shoot something for someone else. This could be your employer, a friend or family member, a club newsletter, or whatever.
– Spend some time reviewing your previous work, especially with the goal of finding images that you may have overlooked.
– Travel to some place you don’t usually go and make photographs in a new environment.
– Take a workshop. Read photography books – preferably about photographs and not about technique. Visit galleries. Join a photography club or meetup group.
– Be patient – if you can. Inspiration is not a faucet that you can just turn on. Sometimes there will be “dry” periods, but they will almost always pass, and letting yourself focus too much on the frustration is often counter-productive.
I rarely have a serious problem along these lines now, but I do occasionally face temporary blocks. Perhaps I arrive at a location and find that I’m just not “seeing” in a photographic way. Because I know that this happens sometimes, I only become mildly frustrated, and I have learned not to panic since I trust that my ability to “see” will return. (Sometime I may write about my longest “block” – though I didn’t really think of it that way at the time – which lasted for perhaps a few decades!)
I have my own methods for dealing with this cyclical issue. As is obvious from this blog, I continuously create photographs and have made an “assignment” to myself to keep producing work that I’m willing to post on a daily basis.
I know that there are other ways to cope with this distressing but quite normal part of the creative cycle. I also recognize that the issue and the solutions will be different for different sorts of photographers. Feel free to share your ideas in a comment!
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By the way, at least part of my personal answer is to keep doing work, and to regard every photograph as part of a larger process that can produce special images from time to time. I certainly do not believe in “waiting for inspiration,” instead preferring to put myself in situations as often and as regularly as possible when I might find it.
Dan
That’s an interesting way to look at it — that to the extent you derive a sense of inspiration from your own work, you will inevitably have peaks and valleys. But I wonder if those are more about aspirations than inspirations. I feel like I’ve satisfied an aspiration when I write up a good blog post, but I won’t feel inspired to write up the next one until I’ve gone out and experienced something.
For me, inspiration comes from the subject matter itself. Like someone already said in another comment, if you think you’re in a slump, just go out without your camera and see how long it takes before you wish you didn’t leave it at home. I do think it can be a good practice to do that anyway (I just spent a couple days in Mendocino with only my point-n-shoot). Sometimes I like to just let myself be inspired by my subjects and leave it at that, so I don’t become enslaved by my aspirations. Maybe it’s that enslavement to aspirations that leads to the inspirational wasteland.
John, the more I think about your question, the more I’m interested in perhaps exploring that a bit at some point. I think that a lot of things may be at play here, and I also think that going far from the source of inspiration may not be the only issue.
Having spent a lifetime doing creative stuff and being around others who do creative stuff – I’m married to a wonderful professional musician, too – I’ve thought about this quite a bit. One thing that is often true in creative pursuits is that we pursue extraordinary experiences – the ones that are not your normal “yeah, that’s nice” sort of experience but instead the “Oh, my God, I cannot believe this!” sorts of experiences.
Having an awareness of the possibility of exceptional experiences that is based on actually having such experiences leads to an intense desire for more similar experiences and an expectation that they are possible or even likely. They are, but by their very nature – they are “exceptional” – they cannot occur all the time or with regularity. In order to experience the truly exceptional in all of its power (as the classroom next to my office is filled with the music of Beethoven – how appropriate is that!) you must experience a whole lot of the unexceptional in between. And if you think that you might have once created something exceptional, almost by definition you are doomed to create a lot of unexceptional work before you create another exceptional thing.
And that is likely to be frustrating. I think that even people who stay true to their inspiration and aspire to create more “exceptional” work must come to terms with the reality that much of what they create along the way will be unexceptional and uninspiring, in the sense that being just “really good” falls short of the aspiration toward “astonishing.”
So, if you accept this idea, the question is, at least partially, how to continue to work toward inspired work when along the way you have no choice but to create work that isn’t that. I think that more artists become undone by this than by lack of talent.
As a side note, I can imagine someone out there thinking that the goal might be to produce only exceptional work. It isn’t going to happen. First, it would violate the very definition of “exceptional” – if everything one produces is exceptional, nothing one produces is exceptional any more; it is exactly what is expected! Second, can we really point to anyone whose work was purely exceptional in all cases? I don’t think so.
FWIW,
Dan
I’d be interested to know what leads us so far from the source of our inspiration that we feel we’ve lost it.
It happens to all of us all the time….—I think it sometimes happens because one has exhausted one’s energy!!
I like your point of doing something completely different!! (That usually works for me..:)
Ben, every so often I actually make myself go out and take a hike with no camera at all. It is actually quite pleasant! :-)
Dan
That’s why I carry a small pocket-able camera, nowadays it is a Canon G12. Works every time I go through this spell and leave the big stuff at home. I’m not thinking I need to photograph something because I’m carrying the 5DII around. Sometimes it is just more relaxing taking the G12 and letting things just flow…
Nick, I believe that virtually all “creatives” deal with this in one way or another. In some cases, the effects are visible to anyone who is around the artist – and I’ve been around my share! In other cases, the artist has evolved ways to deal with it more discretely, either by displacing the concern into other types of activity or by simply realizing that it will pass and that it is normal.
Your “just let it pass” comment reinforces a small point I made near the end of the post when I wrote a bit about my own process. In almost all cases, when I find myself uninspired I no longer panic or question (much! :-) my worth as a person or my credibility as an artist. I’ve been through it enough times to have some faith that it can pass.
Take care,
Dan
BTW: One almost sure-fire way to overcome a lack of inspiration is to go out without a camera! You can just bet that you’ll spot 100 great shots that you just have to capture!
Nick, I believe that virtually all “creatives” deal with this in one way or another. In some cases, the effects are visible to anyone who is around the artist – and I’ve been around my share! In other cases, the artist has evolved ways to deal with it more discretely, either by displacing the concern into other types of activity or by simply realizing that it will pass and that it is normal.
Your “just let it pass” comment reinforces a small point I made near the end of the post when I wrote a bit about my own process. In almost all cases, when I find myself uninspired I no longer panic or question (much! :-) my worth as a person or my credibility as an artist. I’ve been through it enough times to have some faith that it can pass.
Take care,
Dan
Wonderful post. It’s nice to hear a seasoned photographer talking about this. Although I know it exists, and I just let it pass, it’s comforting to hear it from you. Thanks for the post.