Imagination In Photography
First, let’s define imagination in order to make sure we are talking about the same thing,
Imagination is according to the dictionary:
“The faculty or action of forming new ideas, or images or concepts of external objects not present to the senses.”
In other words
you see with your mind what is not there but could be and then you make it happen in your photography, and it doesn’t matter what you use to get your vision thru, the process is not important what’s important is the result, you could have used lightroom, photoshop, or any of the other software out there, or maybe you made a print on paper and then ran the photo thru the washing machine, or stepped on it a few times, it’;s not the process it’s the final result. And if somebody tries to tell you that that is not traditional photography just tell them ” exactly, that’s my intention”
So use your imagination to get your photo and after you have gotten your photo use your imagination again to kick the crap out of your photo, not to make it better but to make it yours.
That’s the whole point, to make it your expression not like everybody else expressions.
If you don’t like something in your photo and you can take it out with photoshop then do it, if you like greens and the photo has dull greens then pump up the greens or the reds, etc.
Humans like to put everything in their place, they like to live in a world where 2+2=4 but an artist will say “2+2=6 on Mondays and 2+2=85 on Thursdays but never on Saturdays.
So you are saying artists are not human? no i am not saying that, what i am saying is that artists are sometimes humans but sometimes not on Mondays or Saturdays, and maybe only on Wednesdays.
Imagination is a tool used by artists, it’s actually the main tool, with imagination you can create and then destroy your creation even without moving a muscle, with imagination you can travel back in time or go into the future to see if your artwork will be finished. An artist can not use logic in his/hers steps in creating whatever they are creating because logic does not have imagination, it’s all about feelings, you go by feelings to create what you want to create, and sometimes you have to shake the foundations of your thinking to be able to create something different, and that is because our mind has the bad habit of going back to the computer type of thinking in which everything is square and made by angles and numbers, so you have to learn how to shake that out and go into the world of the
illogical and creative state of mind, where 4 + 4 does not equal 8 but maybe 30 on Mondays and 40 on Tuesdays, up is sideways on Mondays but down on Wednesdays, cold is warm and hot is not.
But you have to be careful when driving on the freeway because if you are in artist mode you will miss the exit, and then you will miss it again, and you will lose a lot of time just driving around in circles and if your wife is with you she’s going to get angry, so not a good idea to use artistic mode while driving.