A visit from some family inspired this week’s podcast. My sister-in-law’s family came to visit, and they have a little 2-year old. My brother-in-law and I were talking about being a dad, and he mentioned in passing how much advice they hear from people when it comes to raising their kid.
As we were talking, it occurred to me that much of the advice that they got was from people who didn’t have children. Those people, like me, were only able to speak from knowledge gained from others. Over the course of the conversation, he mentioned that there comes the point where you just know what will work and won’t work regardless of the advice. I realized that was wisdom when dealing with his kid.
In our creative practice, I think it is much the same. We can take in all sorts of knowledge, facts, skills, and whatnot, but in the end, if we don’t move to some level of wisdom, it will be a hard creative road. It is the wisdom of our experiences in that allows us to be the artist we want to be. When we start to apply our understanding of the information we have assimilated into something new and unique to our creative practice do we learn how to be ourselves in our creative practice.
There is nothing wrong with working hard to gain knowledge, but in my experience, at some point, you have to start to let go of all that knowledge as power and then move forward to really becoming a creative voice for your own story.
A few weeks ago, I had the please of being interviewed by Mike Pach on the Photo Show in Colorado Springs. You can get a copy of the interview from the link below. Mike and I had a really great time talking photography and creativity. Check it out!
Don’t forget to check out my 2017 Workshops including the Perceptive Photographer Workshop focused on the introspection side of photography.