the challenge
After the experience I had yesterday, we are back to basics today. Well, more or less.
Our assignment is based on creative exploration — capturing an Insight inspired by the Eclipse Seed.
Let’s be creative!
my insight
I found this black scratched circle on the back of a truck on my way home. Its perfect shape and imperfect texture reminded me of the moon. And its blackness completed the eclipse association.
I decided to duplicate the moon and overly its semi-transparent copy to complete the effect of the eclipse.
reflection
Almost all visual Insights I share in this creative journal go through some minimal digital processing. At the beginning of this journey, I decided to “limit” myself to using simple tools anyone can use. So, all the photos I share were captured with my smartphone camera and processed with Google’s Snapseed app, again on my smartphone.
The reason I’m telling you this is the word “limit,” or more accurately, why it isn’t really.
The decision to use the simplest tools for my visual Insights had a sound rationale: I wanted to use tools anyone can obtain and use. With that, however, came a constraint. I wasn’t allowed to use my professional camera or different lenses. Photoshop or other advanced tools were not an option. Everything had to be simple.
But what seemed like a limitation at first, was actually an opportunity to grow — to settle for less (tools) and still achieve results I am happy with. It allowed me (or forced me) to experiment with tools I have dismissed in the past. And like any other constraint, this decision actually spiced up the creative challenge.
In the black moon Insight above, I’ve done something I hadn’t done until now: I duplicated and overlaid the photo. I did it using the same app I am applying for months, and yet this was the first time I used this option. As simple as it might be, this opened new creative options which I wasn’t fully aware of before.
What started as a creative exploration assignment, turned out to be an experiment with a photo-editing app. The creative process didn’t end with capturing the photo. I continued playing with it, trying different things, evaluating different results, and finally choosing the best of them as the Insight to share. What drove me to this experimentation are the alleged “limitations” of the tools I am using. Embracing them helped me create new paths toward new solutions.
mental notes
- Constraints drive us to experimentation, and experimentation sends us to new paths, and often to a new solutions space.
now it is your turn… be creative!