Photographing From The Heart

Recently PE made reference to an old post about creativity on the Gaping Void. It was originally written in 2004 but I believe has information/advice relevant to creativity today, four years later.

There are 36 tips given and discussion provided on many of them (along with cartoons). One of my favorites is:

26. Write from the heart.

There is no silver bullet. There is only the love God gave you.

As a professional writer, I am interested in how conversation scales.

How communication scales, x to the power of n etc etc.

Ideally, if you’re in the communication business, you want to say the same thing, the same way to an audience of millions that you would to an audience of one. Imagine the power you’d have if you could pull it off.

But sadly, it doesn’t work that way.

You can’t love a crowd the same way you can love a person.

And a crowd can’t love you the way a single person can love you.

Intimacy doesn’t scale. Not really. Intimacy is a one-on-one phenomenon.

It’s not a big deal. Whether you�re writing to an audience of one, five, a thousand, a million, ten million, there�s really only one way to really connect. One way that actually works:

Write from the heart.

There is no silver bullet. There is only the love God gave you.

I think I like this because that’s always been the way I photograph. It’s always felt kind of like trying to capture God qualities so that I can share them with others. I see God in my work and want to share what I see with others.