By now, after the first three creativity posts, I hope you have learned some new aspects of creativity. More importantly, I hope just thinking about these ideas has inspired you to try a new photo technique, or perhaps book your next trip to create an original image in a new location. Even after decades of shooting it is still like Christmas when I look at the back of my camera and get an image I can’t believe I actually created. You think you are getting it right, but you never know. And of course I get tons mediocre images for the few that I am really happy about. But the excitement and creative process is so compelling, I can never get enough!
Which brings me to one more aspect of creativity….striving for the impossible. You know the saying, if it is easy everyone will do it. But what about those seemingly impossible shots we see that are just incredible? Did the photographer just get lucky, or were they driven to try and capture something totally off the charts. This drive to create something that you think is almost impossible is great motivation in your creative vision. You might just get a shot you can’t believe you could get. Think of all the painters and sculptors who created something they didn’t think was possible when they first started…
Once I was talking with an art director about ideas to highlight a new strobe, and he wanted to hire me for an adventure sports shoot. Talking with him, I casually said I’m glad he wanted me to shoot adventure sports because I was not a wedding photographer (which they also needed to hire at the time). After a pause on the phone he said….”that is a great idea! Let’s have you shoot a wedding on the side of a cliff!” I thought he was joking, I mean this wasn’t really possible was it? But then we started brainstorming, and the ‘cliffside wedding’ shoot was born. We were striving to do something we really hadn’t thought possible, and create a shot we had never seen. After weeks of logistics, scouting, hiring a crew of rock climbers to rig the shot, and finding some rock climber friends who agreed to ‘be wed on the side of a cliff’, we created the final image (see the shoot here). A side note to this shoot…the rock climbers were boyfriend/girlfriend at the time we hired them, but during the shoot the ‘groom’ asked his ‘bride’ to get married for real…a cliffside wedding proposal!
Last year we went to Brazil and the Pantanal region to photograph jaguars. I researched the trip, looked at hundreds of jaguar images online, and formed an image in my head. There were fantastic images of jaguars hunting, perching and even a few head on jumping shots. But I didn’t find a perfect broadside, airborne wild jaguar image filling the frame (except a few captive animals). So I decided my impossible shot was the perfect jumping jaguar. Of course a lot of this was just going to be luck. I know photographers who have photographed jaguars for years and not encountered this situation. I did as much as I could…travel to Brazil, photograph on the rivers for hours each day, go with great guides. But you can’t control the jaguars. One morning we came around a bend in the river and there sat a jaguar on a tree limb watching a capybara swimming in the river. The perched shot of the jaguar was amazing, but I couldn’t believe my luck. It looked like this jaguar was going to jump across the river, and it was broadside and frame filling at 400mm. I focused to the right of the jaguar, hoping I could catch him if he jumped…and in a split second he was airborne. I fired away and crossed my fingers I got the shot, an image I really didn’t think would be possible. Sometimes you just get lucky…you can read about this shoot on the Nikon website right here.
Cree and I once did a sea kayaking trip to Patagonia. We paddled for 60 straight days exploring some of the most remote places I have ever seen. Patagonia became one of our favorite places, and we return every few years to teach photo workshops there. The landscapes, wildlife, gauchos and estancia life are fascinating. One year we hired some gauchos to ride their horses through a turquoise lake that bordered their estancia (ranch). This already felt like a special image, not one most photographers would get. But during one ride through the lake a flock of flamingos flew over the gauchos. This was impossible luck! A shot we never thought possible (image at top of post). You just keep trying and hoping for something special to occur. And it is moments like this that inspire me to keep trying for that ‘impossible shot.’
This will be the last creativity post in this series. Now it’s time to grab our cameras and go shoot! What new creative ideas do you have for your next image? Maybe today is the day I get that impossible shot…