the open field

(untitled) (c) D Harris Have you found that one of the challenges in being a creative artist of any kind is how to improve your creativity? How to move beyond your creative blocks, limitations, and skill levels towards greater ideas, inspiration, and more meaningful, finished results? If you are like me, you love to create and are dedicated to creating and see it is necessary to your life (and who you are). I too have had successes, and “failures” (though there is no such thing) and I have encountered all the pitfalls: burnout, lack of inspiration, long dry spells, self doubt, confusion, despair, giving up etc. I have also done a lot of research and reading into creativity. I have looked at stages of creativity, motivation, methods, practices, biographies, you name it, all in search of that creative spark that can ignite my own creativity. And you know what I found over the last few years? Some of it is helpful, a lot of it is not and a lot of it is just bits and pieces. Ther...

So how do I cut though in the medium of photography? How do great photographs cut through? One way is examine it a little further. If a photograph is closest to memory, with memory comes the past, and time, away from and out of the present moment. A photograph is a reminder of the passing of time. To me there is some inherent sadness in this, as it means, in time, the passing of ‘me’. It is a loss. I will be someone else’s memory one day, someone else’s photograph looked at 100 years from now. Yet this sadness is the sadness of ego, of the personality, that thing is us that wants to be eternal, but is a complex fiction. (Remember, the ego loves the security of the known, and creativity is facing the unknown. Funny how the two are intimately linked). Looked at it another way, memory can also be traced from the past, to the present. Memory recedes into mist and myth, back before ‘history’, back to what we call ancient times.  This looking back mirrors traces of vanis...

Facing Island (c) D Harris Your way of seeing comes from within you, not from your subject matter. Unless you want to use the camera (or your chosen medium) to merely record what is in front of you. Nothing is objective, as the choice of where to stand, placement of the frame, the exposure settings, post processing, and the preference of one photograph over another are all subjective decisions. Subjectivity can be reduced to a minimum but objectivity is a myth. I have a set of criteria that is integral to who I am. These are the backbone of my ways of seeing. They are criteria that form from an inner affinity, a spontaneous intuition of what I am drawn to and moved by. I can look at hundreds of photographs, including many that are considered great in the history of photography, but there are a limited number that resonate with my being. It is at this level that I seek to photograph, to create. The challenge here is to stay at this level of awareness when I photograph, and...

After Pollock (c) D Harris                                                     It can be very useful to apply insights from one creative medium to a different medium in order to deepen understanding in both mediums. Previously I wrote that music is a direct expression of emotions. Yet, to me, a photograph expresses a felt sense, rather than as-direct-a feeling as a piece of music can. I believe this comes about because music has a direct connection to the emotional brain due to the melody, rhythm or harmony evoking a feeling. Thought and the thinking mind are not required. Up until about the age of seven, children operate basically through the emotional brain. Around the age of seven, the thinking facilities start to develop, and this allows a layer of complexity to develop, from simple associations of thoughts all the way to abstract thinking. In my ca...

Buddha Face (c) D Harris To me, creativity is sitting right at the coalface of the unknown. This takes courage because failure is imminent. Ego likes certainty and security, which is the known. So the basis of the view that I am creative person or that I produce wonderful work is always on the verge of collapse when facing the unknown. It is a turning towards and facing the existential angst. Pressures mount, anxiety intensifies, and other questions haunt below the surface and threaten to overwhelm the mind, such as 'who I am?' This is a natural process, although it feels very much the opposite. This needs to be breathed through, quietly, the aim being to let the noise settle, and at some stage, begin.  Where is the coalface of the unknown in your own creativity?  For me, in music, it is composing a piece that has feeling, is melodic, and forms the basic structure of a track or a larger piece of music. All other choices are pure distraction. What instrument should...

                                                         untitled (c)  D Harris   "If there is a path before you, it is not your path" Joseph Campbell I find it useful, for any creative endeavour, to have a look into the nature of creativity itself. My first caveat is that you must do this for yourself. Don't be lazy. Laziness is anathema to creativity in the long run. My second caveat is to choose your own metaphor for creativity. My third caveat is to define terms that get straight to the point. My last caveat is: you do not have to pursue a creative endeavour, it is your choice to make. My metaphor:  digging deep, mining creativity, archaeological exploration, sitting at the coalface, in the solitary darkness, buried, excavating, exploration, discovery. These are my terms:      Pa...

Ephemeral (c) D Harris Any type of art practice is the consistent, structured application of practices and methodologies to concepts that centre around meaning making and communication. The process is integral to the result. It is multi-disciplinary, experiential, and is self validating through the need to create and make sense of self and /or one's relation to one's experience of the world. It is more than a hobby, it is primarily about meaning making and the joy of creating. It is not a substitute for a mediocre or safe or conventional life. It enriches life and in turn life enriches the practice. It is as much about exploration as it is about expression. An exploration of self, of who you are, a way of relating to and interpreting the self and the world around us. It is multifaceted, as it integrates life, philosophy, meaning, reflection/meditation, contribution, and a heart felt sense of joy from solely focussing on the love of the medium. Just as jazz lost its way...

                                                 Dream #2 (c) D Harris                                                    A photograph is essentially an object, an object on a wall, in your hand, on a page, or on your screen. It is two dimensional. It is usually rectangular, or, if the photograph is square in format, it is usually on a rectangular page or screen. The two-dimensional physicality of a photograph is important because it is the end product. It is the message. The actual act of photographing is entirely different. It is the means of communicating, the medium through which communication takes place. Or is it? Immediately several questions remain.  Is there a message? Who are we trying to communicate to? Th...

Carisbroke Station (c) D Harris P hotography and music appear to be different languages. However, the same question underpins both: Why learn and speak the language? It is not about having something to say. Words are available for that. To me it is something more. Time is crucial in music. Sloppy timing isn’t satisfying. Good exposure (recording the light) is important in photography. Both require a level of technique. Let’s call technique facility. Having facility means being free to express, not being stuck or hindered by technique. Both photography and music have structure. Facility through technique requires structure. The rules of harmony allow certain types of soloing as expression. Some sound pleasing, some don’t. The rules of exposure and framing create a certain order as opposed to randomness. Structure is an aid to gaining facility. At a certain level though, structure acts as a constraint on personal expression. Stuck in the same patterns, playing the sam...

Shadow Self (c) D Harris T hat we construct our own reality is a fiction. To construct reality, we would have to be apart from it, outside of it, in order to construct it. This is absurd. Yet this is the state of a lot of contemporary art and contemporary art photography. It is a double fiction, because its sincere belief that we construct our own reality has become a 'reality' in itself. It is like the old saying, "tell a lie long and often enough, it becomes a truth." We could argue that, like novelists, we dream up characters that have believability and that these characters interact in real-life plots, and that this can reveal truths about ourselves and our world. Yes it can. It is still fiction if the photographer’s own truths are not expressed. A contemporary course curriculum for art photography states: "Consistency adds believability to your work and persuades your audience to suspend its disbelief." Two critical questions immediately arise: ...

Interior Landscape #2 (c) D Harris Is this image that of a flat piece of land set against a blue sky, or is it a table top against a wall? Our perception may allow us to recognise it as both. We are programmed to perceive what we expect to see. Sometimes, what we are looking at may not be what we perceive it to be. Which one is true? It depends on your perception. Our logical minds cannot process a “both-and” scenario and dictate that it must be “either/or”. However, truth is linked to perception and perception makes truth relative to the individual. This naturally leads to an experiential point of view, for what I have I experienced, I can ‘know’, in the felt sense, and what I have not experienced, I do not know. I may claim to know, but that is mere conception. In Zen, emptiness is a particularly challenging barrier on the path to ultimate awareness. It is a great test because the barrier is an illusion itself, set up by the conceptual mind, but perceived as real. There i...