Today it’s exactly a year since the first lockdown in Bulgaria started. A year ago, we were all told that it’s just for a couple of weeks and then everything would go back to normal. Though, it didn’t. The whole world has been on hold for an entire year, and it doesn’t seem like, any of this is going to change any time soon. While it’s bad for everyone, it’s the worst on creatives.
The human mind works on its reactions to stimuli. Evolutionally our brains developed so they can solve problems in the fastest, most efficient way possible. While, even in lockdown we still have to work, do groceries, pay bills and all of that mundane stuff, there isn’t much else to it. I remember watching a Five Finger Death Punch interview, where Chris Kael (bassist), said that after a tour the most exciting thing one can do is throw out the trash… Well, the most exciting thing the world has had to do in the past year is… you guessed it, throw out the trash. We’re all stuck inside, among the same four walls, if we are lucky, interacting with the same handful of people. If we’re not, though, just sitting alone all day. All of this has its toll on us, on our mental and even physical health.
So what is creativity? Well, for me, it’s finding a way to process information in a new way. What I mean by that, is the bigger part of our understanding of the world is our perception of it. No matter if you’re a photographer, film maker, designer, musician or basically any kind of a creative, your art is your reaction to something that’s happened in your life or that is still happening. For the past year, all that’s been going on for the majority of the world populations has been the same day after day. No matter how interesting your job is, or how much you love it, there’s a high chance that your life outside of it has been the same. While this has been going, our creative juices have become stale, as there’s no new input coming in.
As a photographer for me, personally, this means that my photos are becoming repetitive and even boring. As much as I don’t like it, there isn’t much to do about it, especially on a budget. What I did is I started shooting mainly film. Yes, it’s still the same city, with the same people, but the experience is completely different. For starters, you don’t get to see the picture you took till days later. Something else I tried that provides mixed results, is get some photographers I know to go out for photo walks with me (social distancing measures followed of course). That also got old quickly, because we are all in the same boat…
I’m always trying to keep positive so I like to think that all that mentioned above will only lead to me becoming a better photographer. My reason to believe that is the fact that the only way to learn something new and grow, is to break your old habits and what a better way to do that than a world pandemic?
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