A few weeks ago we traveled to Ontario for our Canadian Thanksgiving. It was a LONG travel day. Up at 6:30 a.m., 90-minute drive to the airport, lines, lines, lines, security, 60-minute wait at the gate, a four-hour plane ride, wait for luggage to disembark the plane, and a two-and-a-half-hour drive to our family cottage. So, if you did that math, that’s about 10 hours of total travel time.
It was a typical grueling travel day for everyone, except our 11-year-old son, Timmy. Probably because he didn’t join us on the trek to the cottage. He went to Mars. No, he’s not an Elon Musk protegé or BFFs with Bezos, he is just a kid with a wild imagination and decided to spend the day imagining he was on his way to Mars. And, it made the 10-hour trek way less boring for him.
If you watched our free Two Mann and the Holy Grail class last week, we talked a lot about using imagination to help us escape the logic traps we all experience as photographers.
You could go the Timmy route and pretend to be an astronaut en route to Mars at your next photoshoot, which would be entirely up to you. Whatever floats your rocket ship. What I would suggest, is taking a page out of Timmy’s imagination book to look at the same old boring scenes, but differently.
We mistakenly think that being creative is coming up with new ideas. Bringing something into existence that didn’t exist before. But creativity, at least when it comes to wedding photography, is looking at the same scenes over and over again, weekend after weekend, and deciding to see it differently.
This takes imagination. It takes imagining yourself, as a person who doesn’t judge the way you currently judge.
If you’re unsatisfied with the photos you are creating, it is most likely a symptom of being bored with your judgments.
Go to Mars on your next photoshoot. Or at the very least, go to the moon. Do something that requires the imagination and curiosity of an 11-year-old. And if you know anyone at NASA, Timmy would be a shoo-in for a Mars expedition.
Love, Erika
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