Why did I do that ? what is creative?

Why did I do that – what is creative?

One of my EPZ friends asked me about the way that I decided on a particular framing, lighting and look of my recent nude picture of Nee Naaa. I had to think about it a good bit, and here’s what I replied.

Where to start... Neen and I have worked together a lot over seven or eight years. We've tried most approaches, and we feel free to be quite experimental. So 'something different' which confounds expectations is one part of it.

There's a famous Bill Brandt portrait/nude, with a heavily shadowed face. That's definitely another part of it.

A third might be a fairly small room: hard to get back further and reluctant to let go of the 'flow' and change lens.

A fourth might be (but this was definitely subconscious, if it's not entirely post hoc), Neen earns her living with her body: the majority of people she poses for are more concerned with that than her eyes, so I could claim it's symbolic of the way that Nina the person is eclipsed by Nee Naaa the erotic model.

But the big thing is that it felt right when I was taking it. That's the really important part of it, and it comes from familiarity with the situation and the genre. It's not a shot that I'd have taken 30 years ago, but it came pretty naturally. I'll draw a car analogy: part of the skillset I needed to pass my driving test, and which is often useful, is turning a car round in the road, 'by the use of forward and reverse gears' as the manuals put it. I know that I should start steering the opposite way just before changing direction, to reduce tyre wear, instead of stopping and just turning from full lock one way to full lock the other, as people brought up on PAS are wont to do.



But an experienced police or close protection driver will know how to skid the car to turn 180 degrees, and be accelerating back the way she came well before my turn is complete. In between, on a wide road, there's the possibility of a U-turn.

There’s a sort of implicit question about how to develop that sense of when something is right, and there’s a great deal written about it, and most of that isn’t in the least helpful to most people. Ask a great photographer about their best pictures, and they may go into the post hoc justification, simply because they can’t get their thinking brain locked onto the subconscious process that they actually use. ‘f/8 and be there’ is sometimes as helpful as it gets.

I’m aware that not all brains operate in the same way: I’m on the autistic spectrum, and things that are self-evident to me have to be explained to the neurotypical – and I miss cues and clues that my wife says are obvious. Therefore, I think I also have to contemplate the idea that the truly creative also have a difference in their neural wiring. And if that’s the case, the rest of us will never match their achievements, whatever we do. We can still get much better than when we started, though!

Practice definitely helps, and so does playing around. Acting like a logical and careful grownup isn’t creative: channelling your inner adolescent probably is. The logical brain can get you ready, and put you in position to be successful – but it’s the part of you that understands the sound of one hand clapping, that grasps the concept of a triune deity, that stands mute and tearful at AE Houseman’s Epitaph on an Army of Mercenaries, and can suspend disbelief for a production of The Tempest without props, sets or costume that will produce the goods. And the more you practice, the more possibilities you see...