When I look back at some of my favourite images, they have one thing in common. I was in the moment. Time stayed still as I immersed myself in the subject. That doesn't mean more 'likes' or instant gratification. I'm a photographer because I love the process - my personal creative journey, wherever that takes me.
I think that the first image was you being creative in post, whilst the second image was you being expressive on the field. That's the key difference. Thanks for your insights as always, Alister.
When I saw the raw file of this picture that I saw many times, I can see in the raw file the state where you was in and the final image where you would like to go. For myself it's the two faces of my character and the "raw files" side of me and the pictures I take related to that side helps me a lot to reach the feeling of the final image. Every time that we compare ourself to something else is dangerous. We have to look at other people work not comparing but trying to understand how they achieve their work. If I compare myself to a joyful person it will takes me down but if I'm asking me or him how he reach this state it will takes me up. Your comparison with the guitar is very telling.
Creativity is very personal. As you point out it ebbs and flows. What I found fascinating in your video was your observation that the creative mood one is in when taking the photo compared the mood when processing the photo can and will have a lot to do with the finished picture. I will be aware of this mood difference when I sit at my computer. It will be fun to experience the process thoughtfully. And see the results in the photo.
The thing I struggle most with is expectation. I take a photograph of something that strikes me and my expectation is that it turns out a really nice picture. Then when I come home and immediately load the photograph I often get a bit disappointed. And that's only due to expectation because when I look at the photograph a few weeks later when expectation is faded, it often turns out to be really nice.
The first thing to know is you are not alone, you are experiencing what most of us experience. There is a great danger in looking at images too closely after a shoot, the experience is so fresh and the images rarely live up to it. Stick with it and trust your intuition. Thanks also for your comment
I think you are right! I also think of your best photograph typical of you are the types you actually are proud of rightefully. For I admire your talent of spotting the sceenes that are almost like polished and cleaned inside a very sanitized room. I'd place them in a surgical emergency room and it would be perfect! No really. It is mind blowing how you can spot these little wonderfull sceenes that are so abstract yet at the same time made out of so much actual stuff in a perfectly natural contexte. Judging an art piece is like judging anything. It is especially true with landscape photography. For it is the best representation of actual nature. Who are we to judge the extreme greatness in any little or big thing? On that note, I am more and more facing sceenes that are always broken to an extent. Always due to human interference. At any given moment, people roam nature and decide here and there that such disposition is not optimal and they go and correct it. But their cavalier intervention sure solve the practicality of their improved trail, backyard and such, but the end resolt is a nature deprived of more rights and hope. And then the sceene is showing less hope and romance. For out of abuse, carelessness and cruelty, other species have less hope, less romance. I feel that just like people and animals, plants and sceenes are affected by the cruelty of men. And that can be at great scale too. I think of here on Vancouver Island. We grow mostly just Douglas Fir tree. They live 1300 years. But the industry collect them at 36!! I regularly go on roads where on week days staring at 8 and ending around 16h00, I cross truck loaded with logs every minute or so... This is huge abuse of nature's hope and it is puseling to figure out how their is still hope and possibility of photography... For a clear cut forest that is cut every 36 years is not at all the same ecosystem of a 1300 year old forest. Not the sane hope for sure for a much reduce biomasse of much more species. When I look at England, I see the same thing. Everything was clear cut in the past to make pasture. Now their is no forest in sight pretty much on the entier island! No worry why England needed the Common Wealth in rescue! Yet it is for the same abuse to extend to more then just England. I guess that from Buckingham the trees in Canada are just carrots. I feel that we are left with a very abused nature to help it express it's potential glory and hope. And because of this abuse, we have a hard time not expressing it's desire to protest.
The comparison point is a really good one, especially when so many social media platforms tend to push the most popular things to the forefront of everyone's attention. It's easy to get caught up in all of it, but very important to monitor improvement of our own work vs. where we were in the past. This will show true growth and improvement.
A deep creative skill is in the ability to hold multiple contradictory ideas in the mind at once and to watch their interplay with open interest. We hurry to conclusions of what is right, good and best when continuing exploration can be far more fruitful. Thanks again for your potent provocation!
Thanks.... that was a great video. For me it was a great reminder of staying in the moment. Also, there are certain moments where I put the camera down. In the past week, I spent time at the beach with my family. I saw several things that I was inclined to photograph. However, either my thinking and seeing were flawed or the shot just wasn't there. I left the camera in the bag the entire week; yet I still enjoyed the landscape around me....
This was excellent, Alister. It is so easy to slip down that hole of comparison when looking at work you admire. It's also difficult to recognize how we have changed not just over the years but even minute by minute. Looking forward to being out in the field with a new attitude on a daily basis.
Very insightful Alister…have never really thought how our mood at any one time affects the assessment of our creativity. Couple this with the inevitable variance in creativity in the field (which is also dependent on mood) and you have limitless possibilities. No wonder we find it difficult to assess our own work! 😂 Great stuff👍👍👍
By far, how tired I am affects how creative I feel. Second, how healthy I feel. And lastly, how relaxed am I, stressed at home or work, or feeling depressed or happy? All these aspects of myself, at that moment in time, affect how creative I feel. And in the end, what I take a picture of, and how I take that picture.
Thanks for this Alister. It’s so timely and helpful for where I am right now. Comparing ourselves to others is the surest way to misery. Unfortunately I do tend to compare my photography, to others. Just like gifted and talent musicians, there are gifted and talented artists. I’m just not one of them and I need to come to grips with that and just do my personal best.
Thanks so much, I understand totally the compulsion to compare ourselves to others and I just think we need to understand the level of commitment and discipline it takes to achieve the pinnacles in any sport/music/art.
Quite often, I will go back and re-edit a photo I have originally edited in the past. It's always interesting to compare the two results even though it can be a bit unnerving. It's not uncommon for me to be very happy with my new interpretation then, when I look back at the original, realize it was better the way I did it before. It makes me worry about my progress but maybe it's more about where i was in my state of mind at the times I edited vs incompetence?
I think you are being a bit hard on yourself, although I do understand why. For me, the hardest part is getting out the door. After that I do my very best. I grok the landscape and gather my data, then reassemble it all immediately after I get home. In this way I have a proper understanding of what I was feeling and thinking at the time. Then I leave it for maybe a year or more before reviewing what I have done. Sometimes it’s not what I remember, other times it is what I feel later that matters. But I always always do my best.
Many thanks, I really appreciate that. I don't tend to go back and re-edit images, mostly due to lack of time and too many unprocessed images waiting to be explored. I try to look forward.
Hello Alister. Sorry for the long text, most likely you won't even read it. I understand the purpose of this video and to some extent I agree, but there is a certain negative association in the air with the creative process in editing, in the visualization on the ground in relation to what we can achieve in editing. I myself have been more in this phase of seeking to achieve a vision through editing, as well as Ansel Adams in the dark room and so many others. I am currently looking for other perspectives but when I feel the call for a great view, when something calls for me, I go back to photographing without prejudice. Maybe what you don't like about that old photo of yours is the memory of how you felt at the time, they are not good memories and that photo takes you there, on the contrary, if your current life is more balanced, the images you create today already lead you to have an inner smile, a warmth.
@@Alister_Benn Grateful. These days I feel that we don't listen and we just want to talk, sometimes I also make that mistake and on your channel I found pleasure in listening and sometimes I express my opinion. May this wonderful balance between inner calm and enjoying the breeze on your skin , remain Alister. Thanks for the channel.
As always you inspire and that soft Irish accent is hypnotic. You flirt with the topic of ethics when you discuss your "majestic" foto of 2015. Is our focus, no pun intended, on making the picture or on processing whatever we make into magic in post-processing? This is an issue with which I constantly struggle. And has resulted in my avoiding proficiency in the processing area. It just doesn't feel right, somewhat akin to your comments on your 2015 landscape foto. Thanks as always.
Interesting really!! What I'm talking about is the photo you took that - in the raw format - is what I'd compare to a woman's face in the morning prior to putting her eye liner, lipstick and whatever else she wears to make herself look attractive. With all due seriousness though, this is the problem (yes, problem!!) I see in this digital era we live in. It's all about making photographic lies. My intentions are definitely not to make your creativity "wrong" but it's Soo darn easy to "cheat" in digital photography - unlike film where when you use color film, it gives you the color that's presented through the lens and that's it, that's all! With digital software allowing one to manipulate the colors of RGB, it's for this reason I call digital photography - cheating.
I'm not so sure I agree that digital photography in itself are cheating. I shoot both film and digital and I get a different experience from both, but I mostly shoot digital. With scanned film these days the same cheating is possible, and I know many who do composite with film. Let's be fair, it isn't the tool that cheats, it's the user.
I am not so sure - without being pedantic - our creativity does not really change but is influenced and driven by differing emotional and existential factors over time and circumstances...
I don’t see a pedantic aspect to this. I feel, as you put it, if creativity is influenced by variables then it is variable and not in any way constant. The oxymoron exists when we confuse repetition with creativity. Thanks for adding to the discussion, I appreciate it.
It may be silly but I think professional photographers like yourself may struggle more as for you guys there is bigger pressure to come out with another fantastic photograph. Fantastic will mean creative, fresh, technical perfect and so on. While for people like me there is little to no pressure, I go out with my camera, I maybe camping or just hillwalking, enjoying my time and it's easy to be creative, to try things and maybe fail but have fun.
Craft is a broad discipline; some in the field, more in front of the computer. We only need as much technique as is necessary to articulate what we want to express…
Dragon's Eye is a wonderful photograph.
Thanks so much, I really like it too
When I look back at some of my favourite images, they have one thing in common. I was in the moment. Time stayed still as I immersed myself in the subject. That doesn't mean more 'likes' or instant gratification. I'm a photographer because I love the process - my personal creative journey, wherever that takes me.
Agree so much ❤️
You are one of a kind, Alister. Thank you for your inspiration.
Thanks so much ❤️
I think that the first image was you being creative in post, whilst the second image was you being expressive on the field. That's the key difference. Thanks for your insights as always, Alister.
When I saw the raw file of this picture that I saw many times, I can see in the raw file the state where you was in and the final image where you would like to go. For myself it's the two faces of my character and the "raw files" side of me and the pictures I take related to that side helps me a lot to reach the feeling of the final image.
Every time that we compare ourself to something else is dangerous. We have to look at other people work not comparing but trying to understand how they achieve their work. If I compare myself to a joyful person it will takes me down but if I'm asking me or him how he reach this state it will takes me up.
Your comparison with the guitar is very telling.
Thanks mate, I appreciate you ❤️ I have a far healthier relationship with guitars and photography now
@@Alister_Benn
When I said "where you would like to go" I meant at the time of the picture. I'm sure since that time you made your road.
Creativity is very personal. As you point out it ebbs and flows. What I found fascinating in your video was your observation that the creative mood one is in when taking the photo compared the mood when processing the photo can and will have a lot to do with the finished picture. I will be aware of this mood difference when I sit at my computer. It will be fun to experience the process thoughtfully. And see the results in the photo.
Thanks for the insightful feedback
Thank you for waking me up! This has been on my mind for some time and now I can move on without struggling so much.
Awesome, super happy to hear that ❤️
The thing I struggle most with is expectation. I take a photograph of something that strikes me and my expectation is that it turns out a really nice picture. Then when I come home and immediately load the photograph I often get a bit disappointed. And that's only due to expectation because when I look at the photograph a few weeks later when expectation is faded, it often turns out to be really nice.
The first thing to know is you are not alone, you are experiencing what most of us experience. There is a great danger in looking at images too closely after a shoot, the experience is so fresh and the images rarely live up to it. Stick with it and trust your intuition. Thanks also for your comment
I think you are right! I also think of your best photograph typical of you are the types you actually are proud of rightefully. For I admire your talent of spotting the sceenes that are almost like polished and cleaned inside a very sanitized room. I'd place them in a surgical emergency room and it would be perfect!
No really. It is mind blowing how you can spot these little wonderfull sceenes that are so abstract yet at the same time made out of so much actual stuff in a perfectly natural contexte.
Judging an art piece is like judging anything. It is especially true with landscape photography. For it is the best representation of actual nature. Who are we to judge the extreme greatness in any little or big thing?
On that note, I am more and more facing sceenes that are always broken to an extent. Always due to human interference. At any given moment, people roam nature and decide here and there that such disposition is not optimal and they go and correct it. But their cavalier intervention sure solve the practicality of their improved trail, backyard and such, but the end resolt is a nature deprived of more rights and hope. And then the sceene is showing less hope and romance. For out of abuse, carelessness and cruelty, other species have less hope, less romance. I feel that just like people and animals, plants and sceenes are affected by the cruelty of men.
And that can be at great scale too. I think of here on Vancouver Island. We grow mostly just Douglas Fir tree. They live 1300 years. But the industry collect them at 36!! I regularly go on roads where on week days staring at 8 and ending around 16h00, I cross truck loaded with logs every minute or so... This is huge abuse of nature's hope and it is puseling to figure out how their is still hope and possibility of photography... For a clear cut forest that is cut every 36 years is not at all the same ecosystem of a 1300 year old forest. Not the sane hope for sure for a much reduce biomasse of much more species.
When I look at England, I see the same thing. Everything was clear cut in the past to make pasture. Now their is no forest in sight pretty much on the entier island! No worry why England needed the Common Wealth in rescue! Yet it is for the same abuse to extend to more then just England. I guess that from Buckingham the trees in Canada are just carrots.
I feel that we are left with a very abused nature to help it express it's potential glory and hope. And because of this abuse, we have a hard time not expressing it's desire to protest.
I am very moved by your feedback, all I can say is thanks and that I do what I can to promote positive relationships with nature and our true self
The comparison point is a really good one, especially when so many social media platforms tend to push the most popular things to the forefront of everyone's attention. It's easy to get caught up in all of it, but very important to monitor improvement of our own work vs. where we were in the past. This will show true growth and improvement.
I agree, as we look back we see changes and an evolution of creative output and indeed preferences. Thanks for your great comment
A deep creative skill is in the ability to hold multiple contradictory ideas in the mind at once and to watch their interplay with open interest.
We hurry to conclusions of what is right, good and best when continuing exploration can be far more fruitful.
Thanks again for your potent provocation!
Such a great topic, I played it through twice. Thanks for taking the time to discuss this.
Brilliant, happy to hear that
Thanks.... that was a great video. For me it was a great reminder of staying in the moment. Also, there are certain moments where I put the camera down. In the past week, I spent time at the beach with my family. I saw several things that I was inclined to photograph. However, either my thinking and seeing were flawed or the shot just wasn't there. I left the camera in the bag the entire week; yet I still enjoyed the landscape around me....
Thanks man, I appreciate that.
Interesting and valuable insights Alister. Thankyou.
And thanks for taking the time to comment, I appreciate it
Alister, your DRAGON'S EYE image is superb. Best wishes.
Hey Sandy, thanks so much, I have a few from that evening that just really please me
Thanks for this.
This was excellent, Alister. It is so easy to slip down that hole of comparison when looking at work you admire. It's also difficult to recognize how we have changed not just over the years but even minute by minute. Looking forward to being out in the field with a new attitude on a daily basis.
Hey, great to hear from you. Really happy to hear the video resonated with you ❤️
Valuable thoughts, Alister, and they make a lot of sense. Thank you!
Cheers buddy
Very insightful Alister…have never really thought how our mood at any one time affects the assessment of our creativity. Couple this with the inevitable variance in creativity in the field (which is also dependent on mood) and you have limitless possibilities. No wonder we find it difficult to assess our own work! 😂 Great stuff👍👍👍
Great piece Alister! Thank you for producing it and sharing!
Thanks so much
By far, how tired I am affects how creative I feel. Second, how healthy I feel. And lastly, how relaxed am I, stressed at home or work, or feeling depressed or happy? All these aspects of myself, at that moment in time, affect how creative I feel. And in the end, what I take a picture of, and how I take that picture.
💯 agree, all these things are hugely relevant, thanks so very much for the feedback
Very wel explanation Alister. Your two photo’s made your story very clear to me. Great vlog. Thnx.
Appreciate that, thanks very much
Wow! Alister, this was a very deep, honest and thought proving video. I LOVED it!!! I bought the book deal btw and cant wait to get stuck in.
Thanks for this Alister. It’s so timely and helpful for where I am right now. Comparing ourselves to others is the surest way to misery. Unfortunately I do tend to compare my photography, to others. Just like gifted and talent musicians, there are gifted and talented artists. I’m just not one of them and I need to come to grips with that and just do my personal best.
Thanks so much, I understand totally the compulsion to compare ourselves to others and I just think we need to understand the level of commitment and discipline it takes to achieve the pinnacles in any sport/music/art.
Quite often, I will go back and re-edit a photo I have originally edited in the past. It's always interesting to compare the two results even though it can be a bit unnerving. It's not uncommon for me to be very happy with my new interpretation then, when I look back at the original, realize it was better the way I did it before. It makes me worry about my progress but maybe it's more about where i was in my state of mind at the times I edited vs incompetence?
I think you are being a bit hard on yourself, although I do understand why. For me, the hardest part is getting out the door. After that I do my very best. I grok the landscape and gather my data, then reassemble it all immediately after I get home. In this way I have a proper understanding of what I was feeling and thinking at the time. Then I leave it for maybe a year or more before reviewing what I have done. Sometimes it’s not what I remember, other times it is what I feel later that matters. But I always always do my best.
I've always been hard on myself, but I'm working on it :-)
I think this is a video every photographer should watch. Thank you!! (and I'm really curious how you would edit that first photo if you did it now.)
Many thanks, I really appreciate that. I don't tend to go back and re-edit images, mostly due to lack of time and too many unprocessed images waiting to be explored. I try to look forward.
Hello Alister. Sorry for the long text, most likely you won't even read it. I understand the purpose of this video and to some extent I agree, but there is a certain negative association in the air with the creative process in editing, in the visualization on the ground in relation to what we can achieve in editing. I myself have been more in this phase of seeking to achieve a vision through editing, as well as Ansel Adams in the dark room and so many others. I am currently looking for other perspectives but when I feel the call for a great view, when something calls for me, I go back to photographing without prejudice. Maybe what you don't like about that old photo of yours is the memory of how you felt at the time, they are not good memories and that photo takes you there, on the contrary, if your current life is more balanced, the images you create today already lead you to have an inner smile, a warmth.
I read every word ❤️
@@Alister_Benn Grateful. These days I feel that we don't listen and we just want to talk, sometimes I also make that mistake and on your channel I found pleasure in listening and sometimes I express my opinion. May this wonderful balance between inner calm and enjoying the breeze on your skin , remain Alister. Thanks for the channel.
As always you inspire and that soft Irish accent is hypnotic. You flirt with the topic of ethics when you discuss your "majestic" foto of 2015. Is our focus, no pun intended, on making the picture or on processing whatever we make into magic in post-processing? This is an issue with which I constantly struggle. And has resulted in my avoiding proficiency in the processing area. It just doesn't feel right, somewhat akin to your comments on your 2015 landscape foto. Thanks as always.
LOL, thanks so much, but I’m Scottish 🏴🏴🏴
@@Alister_Benn OOPS!!!
A bit off topic Alistair, but can I ask what make those beautiful headless guitars are that are hanging on the wall?
They are Mayones Hydra’s one 6 string, the other a 7 string
@@Alister_Benn I thought they were Mayones, as I have a Duvell Elite 6. Nice!!
Interesting really!!
What I'm talking about is the photo you took that - in the raw format - is what I'd compare to a woman's face in the morning prior to putting her eye liner, lipstick and whatever else she wears to make herself look attractive.
With all due seriousness though, this is the problem (yes, problem!!) I see in this digital era we live in. It's all about making photographic lies. My intentions are definitely not to make your creativity "wrong" but it's Soo darn easy to "cheat" in digital photography - unlike film where when you use color film, it gives you the color that's presented through the lens and that's it, that's all!
With digital software allowing one to manipulate the colors of RGB, it's for this reason I call digital photography - cheating.
I'm not so sure I agree that digital photography in itself are cheating. I shoot both film and digital and I get a different experience from both, but I mostly shoot digital. With scanned film these days the same cheating is possible, and I know many who do composite with film.
Let's be fair, it isn't the tool that cheats, it's the user.
I am not so sure - without being pedantic - our creativity does not really change but is influenced and driven by differing emotional and existential factors over time and circumstances...
I don’t see a pedantic aspect to this. I feel, as you put it, if creativity is influenced by variables then it is variable and not in any way constant. The oxymoron exists when we confuse repetition with creativity. Thanks for adding to the discussion, I appreciate it.
It may be silly but I think professional photographers like yourself may struggle more as for you guys there is bigger pressure to come out with another fantastic photograph. Fantastic will mean creative, fresh, technical perfect and so on. While for people like me there is little to no pressure, I go out with my camera, I maybe camping or just hillwalking, enjoying my time and it's easy to be creative, to try things and maybe fail but have fun.
Oh, you bet that’s real. I have had to really rise above that. I’m getting better at separating my own creativity from external validation
I think the craft must be learned first, and learnt well so it doesn't get in the way of creativity.
Craft is a broad discipline; some in the field, more in front of the computer. We only need as much technique as is necessary to articulate what we want to express…
Bagsy me first!
Great job ❤️