{Be Successful} New Perspectives – A Creative Challenge

Jump in your time machines for a minute and take a short trip with me. It’s 1999 and I’m excitedly sitting in my first photo class in college. I’m surrounded by future friends and we’re all anxiously awaiting our first assignment. Then it comes: ‘Lock yourself in your bedroom and don’t leave until you’ve shot 10 rolls of film.’ That’s 360 images in one small space. What?! I immediately began planning my ‘not going anywhere for a while’ survival kit. Food, water, a Snickers bar, and maybe a magazine (we didn’t have smart phones with internet back then).

Okay maybe it wasn’t that bad but the task definitely seemed daunting. How in the world was I going to come up with 360 images from my bedroom?

I clearly survived and in hindsight it was probably one of the most beneficial assignments of my college classes.

So I challenge you to do the same. Lock yourself in a room and don’t come out until you’ve shot 360 images. At first it’ll probably be easy. There will be obvious pictures. But then you’ll be forced to either create image content or see the existing circumstances from fresh viewpoints. Stand on your head, lay on the floor, or crawl under your bed (although this option may be scary if you don’t clean there often). Pay attention to the details you quite easily miss on a day to day basis.

If you’re not a photographer, come up with a variation of the activity that fits your creative medium! If nothing else, be still for an extended period of time in a small area and force yourself to pay attention. Be intentional about looking beyond the obvious and see parts of life that are often overlooked. The beauty of being an artist is that we get to share our unique viewpoints with the world and show people a fresh perspective they never knew existed!

Happy Creating! <3, Erin