If you’re a creativity supplier be very proud of your steady revenue in the face of change. Either you’re a positioning genius in an unstable market or it just may be the quiet before a bigger storm.

Scott Anthony for the Harvard Business Review writes how flat yet steady revenue might, in the face of disruption, help category leaders ignore even the most obvious need for change. CD sales in the mid 90’s, Newspaper Revenues, or photographic film sales are solid examples of change snubbing categories.  Another example of an organization disregarding change – yet much less surprising – is the USPS sited in an article in the Economist titled: Hoping for Deliverance.

Market positioning is difficult under the best of circumstances and the sole proprietor may have neither the time nor inclination to react even if they’re trend aware. Professional photographers are an especially hard hit group. It was nearly impossible to avoid flat footing the need for dramatic change.  As a group they’re finally mostly aware yet a large number remain bemused about how deep the change will go and its affects, same goes for the advertising industry.

For the last couple years I’ve been thinking about my work in terms of big “D” and little “d” where big “D” is discovery and little “d” is delivery.  Discover your motivation, your unique blend of expertise, and the problems to be solved.  Delivery is the how your discovery fits onto a business model. Sound like “design thinking” – yeah, it should.

It’s been an ongoing process that, thus far, pivots on motivation and passion.  I’ve been taking inventory with questions like these:

1.  Where is my work passion rooted; What do I find exciting?

2.  What are the relevant experiences and skills bordering the excitement?

3.  Among my collected experience / skill inventory, what is uniquely mine?

4.  What value can I offer based on my inventory?

5.  What values are uniquely mine that will not change?

6.  What is the value proposition of my work?

Basic ? Remedial? Yes but it’s easy to lose track of #1 and if you do, #6 will eventually  suck.  It’s a process that was probably switched to auto pilot in early career but certainly if I stayed more cognoscente it would have lead to fewer wrong turns.

What’s at the core of your offering?  You’re a musician but aren’t you also a performer? I’m a commercial photographer but I’m also a visual artist.  If you’re an auto maker aren’t you also a transportation company?  I make these distinctions because they are roots oriented.  Buggy whip manufacturers were in the in the motivation business.  Photographic trends lose relevance but visual art will always move people.

Get the point? Find passion’s root, get back in touch with what you offer, hold onto what won’t change and rappel from there. Good advice for the USPS don’t you think?

Reference Permission To Suck Manifesto:

Law #6.    Your creativity is about your heart, not their surface. Creativity is your world view filtered through your talent. It’s your passion, experience, expertise, inspiration and your rules that drive you to create wonderful things that you’re destined to hate because they’re not good enough, and others are open to admire because they couldn’t do it.



I saw a video of Graham Nash playing Buddy Holly’s guitar [embedded] and picked up on this quote:

“I think part of the process of this whole thing is to get as close to the flame as you can get without being burned” – Graham Nash

Buddy Holly died at 22 when Graham Nash was 17 – clearly it affected him deeply; you can feel the emotion of the moment as he holds Holly’s guitar and says, “Touching the Flame”.  The guitar isn’t the flame but is there any doubt about which fire Nash refers?

Every creative soul is capable of  a 5 minute monologue about their creative flame.  Odds-on it’s a semi-coherent ramble of disjointed thoughts spoken through a struggle to put feelings into words.  Go ahead, give it a shot: What is the flame and where do I find it? Is it passion, obsession or spirituality? Give me a definition please.

Independent of definition accuracy, I’m convinced that we can’t own the flame; no personal flame exists so it’s not ours to sell, only ours to find.  An artist’s most valuable time is spent seeking the flame and, if lucky, we’re allowed to feel occasional warmth.

Additionally, a great piece of creativity isn’t something that needs explanation. You react to it as a pyromaniac would to flame; drawn to it by curiosity, sensuality, warmth and fear.  Inexplicably, the feeling it gives you is like fitting an ocean through a straw.

All my adult life I’ve played the game of creativity for money: You pay me to add value to your idea of what a photograph should look like – I do my best. Together we’re capable of interesting surprises, but I’m fairly sure the “flame” isn’t warming us; we are simply using the memory of warmth to make a living. It’s as though the better we are at making money the less chance of getting burned, on the other hand, stay away from the flame long enough and you’ll go broke.

Execution is a commodity, yet the talented manage to add original value to an execution. Perhaps original value is the byproduct of near burns. Like internal scars on the imagination we execute personal originality that requires intense heat for renewal. No flame yields stagnation or – worse – a talent void.

Permission To Suck Manifesto Law #16 revisited:

Flame finding is your talent. Imagination is hot, execution is cold. The flame is illusive; if you must obsess about something, make it a flame search. “I think part of the process of this whole thing is to get as close to the flame as you can get without being burned” – Graham Nash

Meet Adam. He’s determined to unite talent – his own. A first-class writer and a first-rate illustrator equals a great cartoonist. A great cartoonist makes an exceptional ad man, screen writer and film director.

Here’s an example when livelihood obligates creative talent to flow. Resembling a creative anthropologist, skills are exhumed with the unrelenting exploration, tweaking and deadlines. There is nothing like the demands of a professional creative career; this is no do it when you feel like it hobby.

The fortunate survive the first third, navigate the second third and finish a maturing prodigy with an inspiring future. Talent is a given – find it or go home – nevertheless wisdom keeps talent relevant.

Biography via Capstrat.com

Some of Americas best known brands gained advantage from Adam’s multipurpose communications talent. An art director, illustrator, writer and strategic thinker, Adam is an advertising quadruple threat.

With nearly 20 years in advertising and now a V.P. Creative Director at Capstrat in N.C., Adam has a national reputation that’s prized locally. Distill, his North Carolina creative ad boutique, boasted a roster of Clients including Kingsdown Mattresses, IntraHealth International, Dey Pharmaceuticals and Mother Earth Brewing.

Before launching Distill, Adam devoted valuable message shaping years to San Francisco agency Ketchum Advertising for Bank of America, Hunt-Wesson Foods (Orville Redenbacher, Knott’s Berry Farm, Peter Pan), Pacific Bell and Novartis Crop Protection.

Prior to relocating North Carolina’s Triangle, Adam freelanced with nearly all major Bay Area agencies: Goodby, Silverstein & Partners; Foote, Cone & Belding; TBWA\Chiat\Day; McCann-Erickson; Butler, Shine & Stern. His work included advertising and strategic planning for among many: Charles Schwab, Microsoft, Levi’s, McDonald’s, Taco Bell, Apple and the San Francisco Giants.

So as not to be accused of creative slacking, Adam’s daily comic strip, “Herschel,” was chosen for syndication by Creators Syndicate. He co-created a Cartoon Network animated pilot called “Major Flake” and his short film, “Love Scene,” won Best Narrative Short at the Ohio Independent Film Festival.

Some awards needing persistent dusting came from The New York Art Directors Show, The Clios, Graphis, Creativity Magazine, The San Francisco Show, PRINT, The AIGA Boom! Awards and ADDYS.

Adam earned a Bachelor’s degree from UNC-Chapel Hill in interdisciplinary studies with concentrations in art and speech communication from, and an MFA in illustration from the Savannah College of Art and Design.

I had a short conversation with a good friend last night at a club.  A mention of his young son reminded me to relive my childhood.

His young pre-teen son is a talented skater seemingly on the “pro track”.  Somewhere in the discussion Dad disclosed, “when I asked him if he might someday perform as well as the World Champion on TV, his son’s answer was: “better”.

Instantly my thoughts reverted to my previous “emerging photographer” days when I thought I could do anything better – just give me time and opportunity.  If only we could bottle a little of that attitude for replenishment years after battle.

Within minutes a talented young photographer stopped by our table to say “Hi”.  I was prepared for the usual onslaught of enthusiasm that typically makes me jealous, only to hear the word “burnout” mixed in with – I’m trying to find the fun.

Instantly I’m thinking: “Burnout at your age? That’s weak.” -  followed by:  “I’ve got 30 years in, what have I lost?  Did I leave burnout and fun behind me 20 years ago?” Probably I have, since I’m solving similar; trying to find the fun.

Apply these points of the Manifesto for Creative Professionals:

4.    It’s a passion play for pay. You’re a whore, or not, it all depends on how much money is in the bank.  It’s a crucial balance that keeps sanity from escaping.  Your clarity of purpose resolves the left and right hemispheres.  Ultimately the decision for what kind of creative you are going to be is up to you, but don’t let the vision go blurry.

14.    Don’t let anyone talk you out of your passion. If you have passion for an idea, don’t lose it by asking others if they think it’s good.  They probably won’t.

16.     Keep a heightened sense of curiosity and stay excited about possibilities.  Don’t get jaded.  Reinvigorate.  Find the new in what you do.

17.   Maintain that childhood vulnerability, innocence and sense of wonder.  Rewind your adult ego to those years when it didn’t matter.

Allow me to lower the bar. Originality, the origin of which is you, is rooted in self expression. I helped teach a few years of Photography 101 on the college level years ago. Not much stuck with me except for one distinct pattern. Nearly all students where eventually infected with a malady; It was apparent that we educated the originality out of our students. It’s important to bear in mind that these were art students eager to develop their professional creative skills.

We say we want to be individuals, but more so, we want to belong to tribes – plural: recreational, professional, artistic, religious, not only social. Our tribes put very narrow restrictions on us. These restrictions might include dress, speech or belief but I’m mostly concern with performance in my tribe. I want to surround myself with greatness and count my social currency.

Everyone wants to “play up”, like owning the smallest home in an upwardly mobile neighborhood; hope says we’ll cash in. Remove yourself from culture too far and it quickly moves beyond subculture into outcast. Moreover, being tops in the midst of lameness is scarcely as attractive; an outcast of greatness? No thank you, anything outside culture is “crazy” and wrong in the ways of greatness.

In contrast, as an individual you long to assassinate culture. Culture believes its own lies and you’re looking for truth. The tools we use to fulfill a need for community are exactly those that restrain individuality. Truth remains the best strategy for originality, yet to communicate with your culture of greatness one must adopt its lies. Wait, I’m feeling dizzy.

To assassinate culture is to change it and challenge the immutable. The demands of culture will cause you to lose possibilities and your greatness is the biggest demand. Are you seeking originality or greatness? Though not mutually exclusive, one is a strict conformist and the other is not.

To solve the impasse, create an argument between your changes and the immutable.  Leverage the tension by telling a story that fills the breach. Everyone loves a good story.

To find the truth, accept information without judgment; don’t believe the lies. Adopt beginners mind to examine your culture. Avoid losing your original attitude for your art. The limitless meaning and freshness was what my college victims were taught to abandon. We were teaching greatness not originality.

A ready mind equates to infinite possibilities. In an experts mind there are few; never say you are an expert.  You are always a beginner.*

- by Bruce DeBoer

*paraphrased from Shunryu Suzuki

This time, an addition of three items to the Permission To Suck Manifesto comes from my own attempts recently to reignite my passion for photography.  It’s not that I stopped enjoying the work but it’s that I had forgotten what it felt like when everything was new.

Suspension of disbelief might be the answer – whatever works – but these three points have been rolling around in my head the past couple months.

16. Keep a heightened sense of curiosity and stay excited about possibilities.  Don’t get jaded. Reinvigorate. Find the new in what you do.
17. Maintain that childhood vulnerability, innocence and sense of wonder.  Rewind your adult ego to those years when it didn’t matter.
18.    Think disruptive thoughts, embrace chaos and be the sworn rival of systematic tidiness.  Get in the face of tight systems that work well for no reason.

See the full Permission To Suck Manifesto.

Today (11/26) is a good day to take off; Thursday is a day I typically post but this one will probably not get much traffic so I hadn’t scheduled anything.  Nonetheless, it’s a day of reflection; one where we count our blessings.  A friend of mine passed along the name of a photographer and a collection of his images recently that seemed fitting for a day of appreciation.  Happy Thanksgiving everyone.  I hope AP doesn’t mind that I did this.

Photographers learn early to capture contrast.  Most serious photographers – pre digital – started seeing frames in black and white so the word “contrast” is etched into our professional consciousness.  Yet, contrast is more importantly seen as paradox.  In this group of images we are confronted with some of the most profound examples.

Horror.  Beauty. Culture. Destruction. Precision. Chaos. Danger. Security. Humanity. Brutality. These men appear super human then again fragile.  Clearly the photographer was in tune to all paradox at the moments he captured because he’s not only trained to see it and feel it, but moreover, his simple attendance is it.

Photographer Collection: David Guttenfelder in Afghanistan

David Guttenfelder is AP’s chief Asia photographer based in New Delhi and a recipient of the top still photography award in the National Press Photographers Association, the 2006 Best of Photojournalism Award for Large Markets.

Via DenverPost.com Media Center:

For the past seven years, David Guttenfelder has witnessed and documented the changing landscape of Afghanistan. Although mostly embedded with coalition troops, he has also covered the presidential elections, bodybuilders in Kabul, the state of Afghan prisons and daily life in the country. Guttenfelder is the chief Asia photographer for The Associated Press and over the past seven years has offered the general public a close-up, intimate look at the lives of troops fighting in the mountains and remote regions of Afghanistan.

A Manifesto for Creative Professionals.

Somewhere in your personal history a decision was made to forgo a “real job”; one your parents would understand.  Artist, creative director, writer, musician, photographer, actor, fine artist or pick one – you got attention for a talent or liked doing it so much that there was just no room to commit significant time to a profession less flattering gratifying. You became one of them sensitive types whose ego is vulnerably bonded to their work.  True objective distance is pointless but it’s best to have a survival strategy.

Let’s start here:

1.    Snub expectations.  Excitement needs space; throw a few elbows if required.  Picasso’s friend and art critic, Guillaume Apollinaire, encouraged his cohorts to “innovate violently!”   Much more risky for creative professionals, is to abide by rules.

2.    The boss is the problem; the puzzle to solve, the idea to create, the crowd to excite, or your soul to satisfy.  Don’t piss off the boss.

3.    There’s NO plan “B”. Quit moonlighting.  Put in the hours; work without a net.  If you have a plan “B” it’s too easy to bail, and you’ll want to.  Part timers can’t keep up with the guy who’s bustin’ it like a sex crazed school boy.

4.    It’s a passion play for pay. You’re a whore, or not, it all depends on how much money is in the bank.  It’s a crucial balance that keeps sanity from escaping.  Your clarity of purpose resolves the left and right hemispheres.  Ultimately the decision for what kind of creative you are going to be is up to you, but don’t let the vision go blurry.

5.    Industry best practices are not creative. Best practices are maintenance and benchmarking is linear: this leads to that, variation is less professional.  The state of the art didn’t arrive by formula or recipe.

6.    Your creativity is about your heart, not their surface. Creativity is your world view filtered through your talent. It’s your passion, experience, expertise, inspiration and your rules that drive you to create wonderful things that you’re destined to hate because they’re not good enough, and others are open to admire because they couldn’t do it.

7.    The committee is usually wrong; however the crowd is commonly right but incredibly dull. If you’re part of the crowd you will be sourced and forgotten.

8.    Ideas are like lightning strikes hitting you unaware after you’ve been rubbing a cat balloon on a wool carpet for months.

9.     Everyone is creative but only a select few can deal with the risk of ego crushing rejection that inevitably comes from the direction you least expect.  If your work is worth more to you than the safety of groups or a secure fortune then you’re “a creative”.

10.    That road block was dropped there for a reason; it’s so you learn how to maneuver or to accept the pain of hitting it.  Either way, if you don’t survive the test, it wasn’t worth the trip.

11.    Find a way to turn your weaknesses into strengths, but don’t tell anyone you’re doing it.

12.    Putting creativity into words dilutes the idea unless you’re a writer.  It’s only creative if you actually create it.  “I could’ve done that” doesn’t count.

13.    If you have a style, be sure it’s following you and not vice versa.  If you’re chasing your style, you’ve taken a wrong turn. (see  #5 “best practices”)  Follow your muse, let others call it your style.  Don’t borrow from yourself too often.

14.    Don’t let anyone talk you out of your passion. If you have passion for an idea, don’t lose it by asking others if they think it’s good.  They probably won’t.

15.    Lose the habit of being successful.  Success can doom your career to mediocrity. Embrace the fact that you’re never going to make it and find comfort in other things.  Once success becomes your work, it’s over and if you’re a creative professional, success looks an awful lot like cash and cheering crowds.

McCurry is an adventurer, documentarian and photojournalist with a great soul, a big heart, and a celebrated pair of eyes.  Steve is an anthropologist who endures with his subjects.

“He has more guts and more determination … nobody busts it like Steve does” – David Alan Harvey, fellow National Geographic photographer.

Notwithstanding an already strong career, over ½ of Steve’s year is spent traveling.  Two solid rest free years, followed by continued traveling in India, Pakistan, and Afghanistan beginning at age 27 in the 70’s and 80’s, exposed him to the old and new of the region, and its extraordinary range of culture and religion. This adventure defined his career path.  A career he has sustained through enormous passion and motivational fire.

His most famous portrait was of a beautiful 12 year old Afghan refugee, shot in 1985 as the central Afghan Government was destroying villages prior to the Russian invasion.  It’s the modern day Mona Lisa. The photo embodies the hopes and dreams of youth, and grasps a haunting promise that we tend to associate with beauty.  Yet, there is a heart breaking tragedy displayed not only in her cloths but in the expression that Steve captured.  The connection with her is universal.

Seventeen years later in 2002, he again captured her photo, which helped raise $1.5 Million for the education of women in Afghanistan.

It’s no mystery that Henri Cartier-Bresson was a mentor of McCurry’s. Steve’s work makes use of extraordinary color and composition but it’s the decisive moment of human drama combined with the nostalgia of their surroundings that ensures the timeless quality of the photos.

“I want the face to carry the photograph. The picture will live or die depending on the character of the face.”

For those of us who’ve made photography their life,  Steve McCurry is an iconic figure who’s filed nearly 1 million study worthy images.  It’s hard to fathom the wisdom with which he fills the frame of his images after a life of traveling.

The Steve McCurry Website

I’ve seen time lapse before, who hasn’t?  Maybe it’s a shaky seedling sprouting from the ground or a street scene with jittery people.  Yet, there’s an emotion to Ben’s short films that I find unexpected.  Not only is the still frame that captures the motion well considered but the motion itself has a power beyond the usual “cool” of time compression.

The shapes and movement are the definition of organic power and fluidity.  The movement of nature contrasted by the immovable man made objects and the planes landing at LAX like alien space craft as nature stays still.  The feelings from the hours fills a single frame.

“It’s a pretty organic process.  I don’t have any specific work flow or rules that I follow.  I shoot all my own footage, and I shoot *a lot*.

When I’m doing a shot, I’m out there standing in the cold, or the heat, or the fog and it kind of embeds a feeling of a place that
carries on with you on into editing.  I don’t go into a reel with a
plan – I’ll often try lots of different music and quick edits until I
find something that feels “right” and then roll with that feeling.

When I watch my earlier work, “Montipora” for example, I find that I get bored.  I felt that way when I was editing it too, but figured it was unique enough that it wouldn’t matter – however, in hindsight, I should have just gone with instincts.  Now, the moment I feel like something isn’t up to par, or boring, or doesn’t go well with the rest of the film – I just delete it and never think about it again.  More than half of the stuff I shoot ends up on the cutting room floor.

When I go out shooting, often I’ll have a vision for what I want to
capture, but I’m never afraid to ditch my vision for something
unexpected or beautiful.

For example, for the Golden Gate Bridge shot where you see the moonlight on the water (in “Another Cloud Reel”), my vision was to get a telephoto shot of the moon rising behind the tops of the Golden Gate Bridge towers (similar to the moon shot in Koyaanisqatsi).

You can’t get shots the Golden Gate Bridge from every angle without a helicopter, so I had to plan it out so I was there when the moon was in the right spot and mostly full, etc…  I lug all this stuff up there, take one look at the bridge and the moonlight on the water, and I immediately ditched the moon behind the towers idea for something incredibly more beautiful.

Nature is always doing incredibly beautiful things – a lot can be said about being in the right place at the right time and being flexible.”

- Ben Wiggins

Go here for more of Ben’s work: Delrious on Vimeo