“Imagination is our brain’s ability to form concepts, ideas, images and sensations internally regardless of what’s happening externally.” – Jeff Bollow
If you’re feeling like your photos are falling flat and your photography is not creating the impact you wish it could, this creative exercise is for you.
GROWING YOUR CAPACITY FOR IMAGINATION: A PRACTICAL EXERCISE
- Take a photo of a subject in front of you.
This can be anything. A bowl of fruit. Your garden. A stack of books on a table. Your shoes at the back door. A landmark in your city.
- Look at the photo. What does it make you feel?
Take note. Does it feel sad, hopeful, confusing, simplistic, funny, exaggerated, boring, surprising, etc.?
- Now take a second photo. Only this time, take the photo in a different way than the first. Keep the same subject, but change the lighting, angle or framing. Make this second photo feel the opposite feeling of the first photo.
Keep repeating this task until you don’t have any more new ideas of photos to take of this subject.
- Now look back at all the photos. Ask yourself these questions:
Which one is your favourite? Which photo is the most remarkable? Which photo speaks to you the most?
There is a good chance you have discovered a unique way of capturing the subject that you never would have imagined if it wasn’t for this exercise.
Photo #1 (falls flat and confuses viewers). Photo #2 (grabs attention and inspires buyers).
Remember Jeff’s quote above. These photos exist because you tapped into your brain’s unique ability to imagine something that you don’t yet see.
The more you imagine something new and create it, the more you create new outputs (new photos). The more new outputs you look at, the more new ideas you’ll generate. These new photos will become the trigger for sparking your next idea.
This is imagination in motion. And you are unique.
No one else has seen the things you have seen, lived in the shoes you walk in, experience life in this time and place, with your unique DNA and personality. Your perspective is unique to only you, and no one before or after you will ever be exactly like you.
What your imagination creates is unique to only you and the world needs to see it. What you output will trigger someone else’s imagination to go into motion, and they will create something new in turn.
We are all connected, and expanding our imagination, creating art as a result and sharing it is invaluable to this world. We need art, and we need each other to share it.
If you did this exercise: congratulations.
Your capacity for imagination just grew. This skill is invaluable. Nurture it.
The world needs it.
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