I have a couple of announcements to start this week’s podcast. The week of August 21 through the 24th this film week at Creative Live. I am super excited to be one of the instructors. I will be teaching a black-and-white film class on August 22, and I will be teaching a large-format photography class on August 24. I hope you can attend both sessions. You can find out more at the creative live website.

I will also be speaking at the Northwest counsel for camera clubs the weekend of November 11. At their convention, I will be teaching two sessions on Lightroom. One on the development module. The second class I am teaching is about how to use various tools in the Library module to stay organized.

The main subject for this week’s podcast is creating assumptions. I have found my creative practice that many times I make assumptions they end up costing me time, energy, and enthusiasm. While I think some assumptions are good, such is the assumption that muscle memory can be used to help us with a task we haven’t done in a while like riding a bike or using our studio lights. A lot of times, assumptions can bite us in the butt.

We make assumptions about what we can or can’t do, or we make assumptions that just because something is happening that it is somehow bad or something’s going to go wrong. I have learned my creative practice that is best just to get the assumptions written down and out of the way so that you can then focus on the task at hand and create amazing work.

If you find yourself being lost or struggling with your creative process, I encourage you to write down your assumptions and see if you can challenge those assumptions in a significant and meaningful way without having them just spin up a bunch of anxiety in your thinking. I think once you find that stress of the assumption out of the way, you will be able to create some amazing photographs.