Thought provoking post... I believe that creativity ultimately comes from the tool between our ears. Equipment can not substitute for creativity, but it can enable greater creativity through a new way to see the world (for example, a shallow DOF lens can suddenly help you to envision scenes in a way you could not capture before). Using the shallow DOF EXAMPLE however, one could "creatively" get it (in some situations) with your existing equipment if it included close-up filters, or an extension tube. As Godfrey's experience shows, an over-abundance of choices can become crippling (or at least a distraction and something else that needs to be managed, robbing what I call "brain cycles" from our CPU).
Where I think an over-abundance of equipment "hurts" creativity in that we tend not to spend enough time mastering ALL of the ways we can use a piece of equipment before we are moving on to play with the next piece. Creativity is enhanced by being familiar with ones tools in more than a superficial manner. I do think that (in general) we photographers tend to spend much more money and energy on evaluating and buying equipment than we do in investing in the wonderful tool housed between our ears. I think that when we do that, we find that creativity need not diminish or reach an end, simply because our acquisition of new equipment must slow or stop. I also think that if one is truly creative, then they can invent new ways to combine their tools to create things that might have been difficult or impossible in the past. For example, (I have not tried this yet) but we've all probably seen self-portraits of people who are caught off the ground, or appear to be flying or floating. In thinking about how this might have been done, it occurred to me that my camera has a 12 second self-timer and that if I could somehow leap at 11.5 seconds then I could consistently achieve similar results. How to do that? There may be other ways, but I bought a Korg clip-on-ear metronome for my daughter years ago. If one tuned the metronome so that one could count to 10 in 11.5 seconds then one could leap at the count of 10 then you would be in the air when the camera took the picture. (long hair would cover the device, or that ear could simply be turned away from the camera). Would such a shot be possible without a self-timer and a metronome? Possibly, but perhaps only 1 out of 20 shots might capture the desired effect. Or one would have to employ a 2nd person, changing the equation from that of a self-portrait (obviously). In the example above, equipment was involved (and if you don't already have it, the need to procure one or more components). But there was also creativity involved in simply working out how one could achieve results similar to what I had seen someone else produce. If one had been the *first* to do such a shot then they could lay claim to a whole 'nother level of creativity (as opposed to me, who is attempting to imitate their results). However, I do not think that standing on the shoulders of anothers prior work or research disqualifies one (or one's work) from being creative themselves/itself. -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List PDML@pdml.net http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
