This question had almost everyone nowadays. When you try to create something, you encounter this problem. There’s so much that has already been created that it’s hard to make something new. So far for almost all of the concepts I have imagined, I found similar ones on Pinterest or elsewhere. When billions of pictures are created every day, you start to wonder: “Can I create absolutely new photographs?”.
Contents
- If you think it’s impossible to take absolutely new photographs you might be wrong.
- Try to make new things on a smaller scale
- Your photographs are unique but probably not the concepts
- Landscape photography and creating new photographs.
- How to make completely new photographs and concepts.
About the post
This post is rather philosophical where I describe my point of view on the topic of this existential question. I try to give a fair understanding but not to discourage you, it’s very important to keep your photographer’s self-esteem at a healthy level. That something is extremely hard does not mean it’s unreachable
If you think it’s impossible to take absolutely new photographs you might be wrong.
You live surrounded by the concepts of your time and might not notice new ideas because they don’t even exist yet. Because this question – “if we can create anything new?”, aroused in different times. People of the 18th century could not imagine abstract paintings that were created in the 20th century. Imagine that there are 10 types of jackets and you look at them and say: “Ok, all of them are already created, what else can we do?”. And then someone rips off the sleeves by accident and there’s a brand new type of leaver vest.
We live in a very big society which is still limited to the existing concepts. To create absolutely new photographs you need to make new concepts for your photography. It’s not something you can imagine right now because it doesn’t exist yet. But it is something you can achieve by trying new things that in most cases won’t work.
Try to make new things on a smaller scale
Yes, we have billions of photographs and these new photographs can be only created by hard work and trial. You might say that there are 8 billion people and even after mastering photography it’s hard to create something new. But there are a lot less of people who work on their photographic style for decades.
As well as in art, in science, the input of one person became smaller as science became more and more intricate. Nowadays often even a hundred or more people can work on one research. So a new invention doesn’t belong to one person like it used to be with Galileo for example. But every person makes a smaller input and makes new findings but on a smaller scale. You might not be able to create a new art movement like cubism but you can create a style that will be only yours. And the people who knew enough about photography will see your style and admire it.
Your photographs are unique but probably not the concepts
First of all, it depends on the type of photography you do. To say broadly it’s very hard to create new photographs since photography has existed for almost 2 hundred years and has almost always been accessible to the broader public.
If you do portrait photography then you need to be very creative to invent a new style of portraits. Starting from medieval times people were painting portraits and in the 20th century, people started painting abstract portraits too. It all creates an enormous number of portraits together with hundreds of thousands of people who are doing photography nowadays.
Yet your portraits will be always unique and of course, no one will ever create exactly the same artwork as you. But the problem is that in 99% of the cases, other works will be very similar and the fact that your works are unique won’t help in this scenario.
Landscape photography and creating new photographs.
If you do landscape photography it’s even harder. The landscapes do not change for hundreds of years and especially beautiful views have been photographed thousands of times.
This is a picture from Ushguli village in Georgia. If you try to search for this village you will find hundreds if not thousands of pictures like this one.
To create unique landscapes that will also resonate with people it should be either something isolated and beautiful, some unique place on earth where not that many photographs were taken. But then it’s more about the place rather than your artwork. Otherwise, it should be more than just landscapes, there should be a story behind and it should represent some more complex concept.
And of course, there are abstract landscape paintings and photographs.
Kazimir Malevich
I have also done some photographs trying to create a surrealist mood. I have a series of works where not everything is looking normal.
This all doesn’t mean that my works are unique. Especially because our new ideas are based completely on the previous concepts. And still, it’s not the reason to ever give up and think that whatever you are creating, someone has made before.
How to make completely new photographs and concepts.
Basically, you have to be very creative and know a lot about your field.
In practice, it’s a lot harder to achieve. Creativeness is something you can train and you can also learn about different types of photography too. But it will take a lot of time.
To become more creative you can try:
- Write down as many ideas of how to make one particular shot as you can. The best is to set an aim of 15-20 different styles and try all of them.
- Try to sort these ideas in pairs and mix/combine them (inverted colours on a picture of a river + double exposure photograph of the same landscape at different times of the day = double exposure of the same landscape with one of the shots inverted (I don’t know how it would look like, I just made it up))
- For developing creativeness try to do something new and something you have never done before in your day-to-day activities. This way you will be more aware of what you’re doing. (go to your kitchen only backwards, for example (try not to fall please))
- Remind yourself that you might be wrong even in the most basic beliefs you have and try to understand opposing viewpoints.
To learn more about your field in photography and know what you can improve:
- Read my photography blog. I try to write about very different photography topics that will help you to learn more and faster.
- Try to improve your visual library in photography, it will help a lot to understand photography intuitively.
- Read articles and books about photography. I’m reading “Camera Lucida” by Roland Barthes right now. Anyways there are so many great books about art and photography available that will help you to understand photography.
- Try to follow the photographers you like and find something special in their style and then copy it. You might either enrich your own style or learn how they make it just for a broader understanding
- Search for new techniques and use them straight away to actually remember these techniques
Stay motivated and enjoy the process. You might create something this world has not seen yet.
Motivation is very important and that is what moves humanity forward. Why not content yourself with the good photographs you take? If they are not unique you will create better ones and they will be more unique.
Try to always think of your photographs critically and that will help to improve your photography skills. If you don’t like your own 1-year-old pictures that means you improve and that’s good.
Search for criticism of your works and not only for fans. There are so many people that someone will like your pictures whatever they are, the appreciation of art does not correlate with the quality as much
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