The Creative Process

Step inside the real creative process behind photography—beyond inspiration, beyond perfect conditions.

In this episode, we explore how ideas actually take shape across four distinct genres: wildlife, portrait, street, and landscape photography. From waiting on unpredictable moments in the wild to building connection in portraiture, from observing fleeting street scenes to returning to the same landscape in search of light, each discipline reveals a different side of creativity.

You’ll learn why inspiration often comes after you begin, how collecting small moments builds your visual voice, and why failure is not a setback—but a necessary part of growth.

Whether you’re feeling stuck, searching for direction, or refining your style, this episode offers a grounded, honest look at what it really takes to create meaningful work.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hello again and welcome back to the podcast. Now, today's episode is about something that every creative person wrestles with, but they rarely talk about, honestly, and that's the creative process. So this podcast sits with last week's, where I was talking about finding inspiration and developing your style. And in this podcast, I'm going to dive a little bit deeper and also look at some specific areas of photography. So that's the plan. So what is the creative process? What is it that people don't particularly share? So I'm not talking about the polished version, I'm not talking about the Instagram friendly version. What I'm talking about, and I alluded to it last week, is the messy, unpredictable, sometimes frustrating, probably often, I would say, maybe more often than not. It's often surprising, and it's the reality of how ideas actually turn into images. So we're going to dive deeper in this today. I'm going to talk about some specific aspects or areas of photography. And I would suggest to you, hopefully, you listened to last week's, but if not, please uh go back and have a listen because it covers um a kind of it's like the beginning part of this process, and that's funny, inspirational of that stuff. And um the creative process is going to be different for everybody as well. So it's good to have as many inputs as you can get at this stage. So um what is the process? Well, it will depend a little bit on what you're shooting, and this is one of the reasons why I wanted to split it up. So I'm gonna talk about four different areas. Um, so the first one is wildlife, which I do a lot of. Um, there's also landscape, there's portrait, and there's street photography. So hopefully, one of those is something you do. They are different disciplines, they have their own challenges, but underneath that you've got the same creative journey, and that's what I really want to dive into. So I'm gonna talk a bit for initially, I guess, about inspiration. Um, so creativity doesn't always begin with a flash of inspiration. And again, if you listened last week, I I gave you an exercise which hopefully you've had a go at. Um, and that's um a way of I I guess igniting or getting creativity moving. But yeah, you don't often get that amazing flash of uh inspiration, and then you you're off. Um, so in wildlife photography, for example, getting inspiration might look like waiting for the perfect moment, that amazing interaction, the rare animal, the once in the life, once-in-a-fetime shot. Um, that's potentially, or that's the myth of what inspiration looks like, I should say. That I can guarantee you the reality is quite different. In portrait photography, the myth of inspiration could be waiting for the perfect concept, the perfect subject, perfect lighting, whatever it might be. In street, it's the belief that something extraordinary just happens in front of you, and you've got this amazing photograph without breaking stride. And in landscape, again, the myth of inspiration around that is that it's chasing that perfect sunrise or sunset and just hoping everything aligns. But um the thing that the the truth about all of them is that inspiration usually shows up after you start. So, in the case of wildlife photography, you'll spend hours observing before something interesting unfolds, and that could even be days. Uh, and I I certainly know that, particularly if there's a particular animal you want to see. Um in fact, certain behaviors, and I've seen the most amazing photographs, but you know that they are, it feels like pure luck, and you've got to be, you know, it's kind of that one in a thousand moment that you just get that. So, one thing I would talk about when I'm introducing people to wildlife photography, particularly, is to lower your expectations because if you think you're gonna just head out there on your first trip and come back with you know these amazing images, you'll be um uh well, you'd be extremely lucky, and you're probably not being terribly realistic. So that's it from a wildlife photographer's viewpoint. If you're a portrait photographer, what you're likely to do, and I can vouch for this as well because I've done my share of portrait photography, uh, portrait photographers they experiment through awkward early frames before something works. Um, what I mean by that is that um if you're working with a professional model, that's one thing because they know exactly what they're doing, and they just do it, it's it's really easy. But if you're just photographing ordinary people, a lot of the time they're tense, they're not 100% sure uh what they're supposed to be doing, they may not know you, so they're a little bit tense about you as a photographer. You know, all these things come in, and there's a whole technique to getting people more relaxed uh so you can get those better shots, but you do need to shoot those early frames that can be pretty horrible and and before you get something really good, and maybe it's one or two frames out of a session. With street photography, you could walk for miles or kilometers before you notice a pattern, before you just see something interesting, or maybe nothing comes up, maybe you're just shooting whatever you're seeing. Um, to not so much for the sake of it, because uh but what I would say is if nothing's really going on, then get some practice in. And I do that in wildlife as well, because you know, I can guarantee that uh a lot of the times I've gone out to shoot animals, there's been nothing there that's excited me. It might be like a bunch of Impala, but I've been there two weeks and seeing them every day, you know, that kind of thing. So I'll just experiment with things and just shoot. So, but that's the reality of it. And then finally, with landscape photography, um, often a landscape photographer will revisit the same location again and again. And the reason that they would do that is that with landscape photography, landscape photography, you see different things, and the this thing about observation. This is what I spoke a little bit about last week, and I've done a whole like a mini series um a few months ago now on observation, composition, all that kind of thing. And observation is really important, and the reason that a landscape photographer will revisit the same location is that uh they're gonna shoot different light, different cloud, you know, it will look different or different times of year, different things are growing or dying, whatever's going on. And a lot of times that's gonna be pretty ordinary, excuse me. But every once in a while, um something is gonna just click. But you've got to be there, you've got to show up for that to happen. So the the common thread in all of this is that you don't wait for inspiration, you actually you go out and work your way to it. You you're there and you're ready to go, um, even if nothing much is going on. So that's the first thing, and I want to talk about collecting rather than creating. So this again is a shift in uh perspective, it's it's a shift in approach. You're not always creating, but you are always collecting, and this looks different depending on your niche. So, in in other words, in my life photography, you're collecting behavior, what you're looking for there, and and what makes really interesting photographs, in my opinion, are moments of interaction. Um, they can be quite subtle patterns in how animals move and respond. And one of the things I always talk about when you're doing your research phase before you go, but it's really, really important, is to look for those little signs. So things like birds, they tend often they'll do a little kind of squatty thing before they take off from a branch, that kind of stuff. So there are little tells there that something's about to happen. And other times you've just got to be there. And I remember being in uh Namibia, and there were some, and I've seen lots of zebras while I've been photographing, and these two were just interaction. I honestly don't know what was going on to this day, but they seem to I don't know if they were fighting or making up or whatever, but it was just really interesting, and there was just an interplay between these two animals, so you sort of have to be there and you have to be watching, but what you're doing all the time is collecting, you're you're observing, you're um looking for those moments of interaction. When it comes to portrait photography, you're collecting expressions, um, you've got the body language, you've got the ways that people reveal something of themselves, even if it's um very brief. And to me, the most powerful portrait photographs are where you look at a portrait of somebody and you feel some sense of who that person is through their expression, just how they're looking at the camera, or maybe even looking away, or maybe there's a movement or a laugh, or something's going on, but just in the natural interplay between the photographer and the subject, you just catch a moment, and this is this is the power of good portrait photography. You're able to build that rapport with the client, you get them relaxed, and you can shoot. In fact, you can shoot fairly formal and guided images that still look really natural. There's there's an absolute skill to doing that. Uh, but this is where you get these amazing photographs, and this is why some people will charge you a lot of money to do that. But they have a real skill. Um, street photography, it's about fragments of life, it's juxtapositions, it's those full sorry, small fleeting alignments of subject, light, timing, you know, all of this stuff just comes together. But again, you have to be there, you've got to be observing, you've got to be ready for it. And in the case of landscape, you're collecting light, atmosphere, and as I've already mentioned, you're really thinking about changes in the weather, in the season, and they give a different mood to the image. So you can absolutely shoot the same place several, several times, end up with several photographs, and they all have a very different mood. And it's all down to the weather, what's going on, the time of year, all that kind of thing. And this is um I would say this is actually one of the strengths of it because one of the biggest disservices you can do to you uh to yourself when you're going off to shoot something is to go there with certain expectations and have certain images as outcomes, as a good outcome, and other images as a fail. That's a really big mistake. Because and and another thing I would also suggest is that when you do that, you might come back from a shoot or be on a shoot, taking photographs, think these are pretty awful. Um, leave them, okay? Don't delete stuff, leave them for a few months and then look at them again. And this is really important because what you're doing when you first look at an image immediately after you've taken it, you're looking at it through the lens of what you were hoping to capture, what was in your mind, and you're looking at now what you've got, and the chances are they're different, and certainly if you're not happy with it, then they're going to be very different. And then the impulse is so, well, that's that was a fail, that isn't what I wanted. If you leave it a few months and then look at them again, you've forgotten what you were trying to get, so you're no longer looking through that lens, you're just looking at them that image for what it is, and you may well see it differently. I I would say most on most occasions, certainly when I've done this, I do see the image differently because I've let go of those expectations, if you like, and now I'm just looking at it and I'm looking at the merits of that image in its own right. What is it? What's what am I getting from it? What's the move? What's the connection? All that kind of thing. So this sort of stuff is really important, and this is the importance of collect collecting becoming, if you like, your visual language, and not worrying about the creative side so much. So create uh collect rather than create, because the creation will sort of happen. Um, and it doesn't have to be this amazing shot every time. You you quite often you'll shoot something which feels a bit ordinary, but when you come back to it, you just realise there's something else there that you hadn't noticed before. And what happens when you're collecting is after a while you start to notice what you're drawn to, and you might find that you're consistently capturing quiet and minimal landscapes, for example, or intimate emotional portraits, or chaotic-led street scenes, whatever it might be. And this isn't random, we we and this is style, so this is about style, and it's a more subconscious contribution to style. And I spoke about style last time, but this develops piece by piece. So the creativity is a process, and one of the best things you can do is to give that process the time and the room to develop on its own. It's like one of those things when you try and force it, it doesn't work. Uh, you come up with stuff that's mediocre, and then you get disappointed, and you um you lose your enthusiasm for it, and that's that. You know, the camera goes back in the cupboard or in the bag or wherever it goes, and then you know, it doesn't come back out again for a long time. Right, so I want to talk about the gap. Uh, what are you what are you talking about, Graeme? Okay, that's the space between what you see and what you can create. So this will show up differently depending on what it is you're shooting. So, for a wildlife photographer, this is what I was talking about, it's where you envision envision that powerful moment, but you're struggling with timing, positional patience. So, for example, it might be trying to catch a breaching whale, which you've got to be on it, you've got to be fast because that's a couple of seconds, really, two to three seconds, and it's all over. And if you find that what you're getting is the splash every time, or somebody's head, or whatever it is, it it's this is about understanding that it's a journey. Uh, so this is not about kind of beating yourself up again about it, but just observing what's going on. Another example is portrait photographers. So you can imagine shooting this amazing, really expressive image, which just you know, as you look at it, you can feel the presence of that person. Uh, but you find it really hard to connect or direct the client, the subject. Um, and and certainly that's how I started out with uh portrait work. I got all the gear, which was great, all the technical stuff. But then I realized that there was a whole other aspect to this, which was connecting with the person I was photographing and guiding them and and you know, knowing how to pose people and all this sort of thing. Um, for a street photographer, it might be recognizing a compelling scene, but then hesitating at the crucial moment. If you're a landscape photographer, it might be seeing incredible light, but then struggling to translate that feeling that you're getting looking at it, translating that into a compelling composition. So, this is what I mean by the gap. And it can feel personal, but it's not. It's technical, it's um experimental, it's about experience. And the only way to close that gap, the the only way to get through it is by repetition. So it's not just shooting more, but it's about looking and reflecting on what you've shot, looking at what you've what you've done. So um last time I gave you a framework to work with, but the questions to ask when you're reflecting, when you're reviewing your own work, is to ask what worked, what didn't work here, and uh what can I do differently next time that will get me a better result? So it may be there are the techniques, there are techniques you need to practice with. Um so if it's about speed getting in the case of a breaching whale, um if you don't have whales everywhere where you live, if you can't practice on lots of breaching whales, then the thing and it may be a case just going out week after week and photographing, and then eventually you'll get something. But try photographing birds in flight, you know, they're they're really tricky. Uh, but if you want to get faster, um that's something I definitely recommend. Um, I want to talk about constraints, and I spoke about this last week, but I think this is really powerful. And I also spoke this, spoke about this in um, I think it was another podcast a while back, or it was a workshop or something. Anyway, constraints are really good. Um, don't underestimate them uh because they are really, really helpful in um developing your skills, not only as a photographer, uh, because you'll need to work, you'll need to produce a role a result with more limited resources, but it's also about problem solving, and it's about that's where the real it again. I in my opinion, uh, a big part of creativity is problem solving and looking at a situation, looking at an outcome you're trying to get, realizing that maybe the gear you've got or how you're positioned really isn't ideal. So, okay, what can you do with what you've got and where you are to get that result? So talking about constraints, um limitations will look different depending on what it is you're photographing, but all of them are powerful. So, in the case of wildlife photography, limitation might already be built in. You can't control the subject. Uh, you if if uh an animal makes a kill and you've missed it, you can't ask it to just do it again, you know, get everyone to go back to their starting positions and have another go. So you have to adapt. First of all, you learn patience, you really have to learn anticipation, and you learn um definitely not chimping, which is where you look at you take a picture and then you look at it on the back of the camera, and of course, while you're doing that, all sorts of exciting stuff's happening that you're not getting. But you just learn the appropriate skills and the appropriate approach for what you're doing when it comes to portrait photography with constraints, try limiting your setup, limit yourself to one light, one lens, one location. And what you're doing is reducing the complexity, you've got fewer moving parts, if you like, to um to have to worry about, and that means you can then focus on what is more important, and in the case of photography, it's about connection with your client, it's about direction. Um, when I would shoot um say families or um subjects, I would always go in older clothes, mostly because at one point or another I know I'm going to be sat on the ground, or rather, you know, lying on the ground taking a maybe a picture of a baby on a on a on a rug. So I'm lying on the ground, you know, at eye kind of eye level, or I'm showing people how to pose. So you need to develop those skills so that people feel comfortable with you, and um you you'll then get really good results. Things that are posed will look really natural. So that's a whole skill set there that I'm not going to go into, but that's um it's well worth it if you are um doing a lot of portrait work. When it comes to street photography, I mean, limit limitations might mean working just in one particular area, it might be a single corner, it might be shooting at the same time of day. The thing is though, you're no longer chasing, you just start observing. If you limit yourself to a particular like half an hour, um, maybe in a particular spot, and then that's it. That's so you you're not hunting anymore, you're just observing what's going on. And this is a really, really important skill to develop because then you'll start to see now that you're not kind of drifting through, looking for something amazing to happen, you're observing what's there, and then you start to really see what is there as opposed to things just happening around you. And as I've already said, with landscape, if you keep going back to the same location, you you will experience different weather, you will experience different seasons. Um, if you have wildlife, for example, there you might see different animals at different times of year. But each time you go, you're going to see something new. And basically, what happens with all of these limitations is it shifts your mindset from what else can I shoot to what else can I see here? It makes you just stop and look. And that if you do, or if you take nothing away or nothing else away from this podcast, I recommend that that's a good thing to um go away with. Now, last time I spoke about um bad shots. I'm gonna slightly rephrase that and talk about failure. And I think failure is really important, it's where we learn. And one of the problem if you think about children and you compare them to adults, one of the big differences that children are usually not afraid to fail. And if they are afraid to fail, it's generally because a parent or somebody that they look up to has given them a really hard time about failing. So they've already created. That fear within a child that there's something wrong with failing. But it a child on their own will just have a go at things. I mean, well, you know, when you learn to walk, I'm assuming you can walk. Um, did you fall over a lot at first, but you kept on going? And this is really the same thing here. As adults, we're taught or we learn that there's something wrong with failure. And for a lot of people, that stops from trying things. So don't be afraid of failing. Treat failure as a really important aspect of the whole creative process. If you're not failing, you're not creating, um, basically. So it will depend again what it looks like, what you're shooting. So, in the case of wildlife photography, failure might be coming home with nothing. So that might be hours or days without a usable image, and it can happen. Um, in portrait photography, it might be a shoot where you just just no connection there with the uh the client, and that that comes through in the images, they're flat, they're forced. Yeah, just doesn't work. Um, street photography could be hesitation, you just miss moments because you in that vital moment you didn't press the shutter button. In landscape, it might be that the conditions never really quite came together. But the the really important thing here is not to regard these situations as wasted experiences, they're not. What you're doing is you're building something that is really important and it's pretty invisible, but it's there, and it's and these are vital skills, it they're patience, awareness, and you develop an instinct. The more that you see things and realize that if you had done slightly something, it's it's what's that takeaway? What can I do next time that will mean that I don't fail in this particular way? You might fail in another way, and don't rule anything out, but that's the whole point. Um, you are just reviewing and learning, applying, and then moving on. So, in in the case of these failures, in the case of wildlife photographer, it might be going, learning to read behavior more, maybe spending more time before you go and do the shoot to just research animals and learn more about their behaviours, their habits, where they're likely to be, when they're active, all that kind of thing. Um, in the case of a portrait photographer, it's really learning how to communicate, developing some people skills. And it might be that you have to find another way of doing that, but finding a way to be able to communicate or going with another photographer. I mean, that's something that I've done, um, particularly when I was doing the portrait stuff, was go and sit with a photographer, another photographer sitting on some shoots. I learned a huge amount, and in and in the areas where I wasn't strong, um, I remember this guy was really, really good at engaging with kids, and um I learned a huge amount. So these are things to think about in the client in the in the um with street photography, it could be sharpening timing, and it's just having the courage, ultimately, it's just finding that part within you that says, Okay, let's do it, we'll push through. I know I'm frightened about this, but let's just do it anyway. And in the case of the landscape photographer, you develop sensitivity to light, to the environment, to again, research, probably a good thing as well. You know, what is going on in this area? Do I really understand it, or is there more I can learn? And that might lead to other things. So the key thing again is instead of asking, Did I get the shot, ask what did I learn from being there? And that's the really important thing to um take away from um the these failures, it's it's part of the learning process. So um I want to talk about finishing work as well, because finishing looks different across these different areas as well. So, what's a finished image? Um, so it might be so in the case of wildlife, uh, it could defining or a wildlife uh photographer might define finished as being a single really powerful image, uh, a really decisive moment that stands on its own. A portrait photographer might be looking to build a cohesive series of um images that tell the story about a person, um, and there's different ways you can do that. A street photographer might curate sequences or themes from could be hundreds, thousands, but lots of frames, lots of photographs, and in the case of landscape photography, it might be refining an image through editing, it could be to maybe try and bring it closer to what they experienced in the moment if there was some feeling. But the the thing about all of this, so what is finishing, what defines finishing, well, it's choice, it's coming down to what do you keep, what do you leave out, and what represents your intent, your intention. Because ultimately, the creative process is not so much about capturing images, although that's clearly a very important part of it, but it's about creating images that connect with other people. Ultimately, as photographers, and I love to use the phrase we're visual storytellers, uh, because I think that that phrase is just really powerful, and it's powerful in several ways. One is it completely aligns with when we're taking the shot, when we're editing the shot, what do we keep? What do we leave out? You know, what is what are these different elements within the shot contributing towards the story that I want this image to tell? It doesn't have to be a long story, short stories are great. Um, so in the case of a portrait, and uh an example I often give, let's say you've you've taken a photograph of somebody who designs boats, and you can position them, so you've got them themselves, but use the background to add to that story. So it could be that you photograph them with a drawing board behind or a CAD display, or um they're in um a yard where a boat is being made, or they're in a marina where there's boats moored up, but that that stuff's there. So you can have you can start to add elements, and this is where a bit of planning and forethought comes in as well when you're when you're approaching these different types of photography. But think about how what would be the ideal shot, knowing that you may not be able to get it, obviously, with a portrait, it's generally a lot easier to put those things together than if you're doing wildlife. But when you've captured an image, obviously the important thing is to shoot something, otherwise, you if you haven't got an image, you haven't got anything to work with anyway. So get the shot and then look at how you can what's the story? What how can you um if you've got time to pick and choose what you've got in there at the time you're shooting, that's perfect. If not, what can you do with the the result that you have? What can produce that final image? But the finished work ideally will connect with other people, and and you want it to connect with yourself as well because you do want to enjoy what you're doing, and I think it's great to be inspired by your own photographs, and every now and again we all grab something that we think, yeah, actually, that was pretty good. So, you know, that's a nice place to be. So, to I guess round this up, um what are the takeaways from this? I think the first thing is that the creative process, if you want to think about that, it isn't linear, it does it definitely is not the same for everyone. And although the the detail will be different depending on the kind of photography you're involved with, and you might be doing different types as well. But essentially you're running through the same cycle. So, first of all, you're showing up. I mean, you you need to show up, and really the more regularly you show up, the better for you because you just you just improve much, much more quickly, and you improve in ways that you maybe hadn't imagined when you first started. So you show up, you pay attention, you try, you fail, you learn, and you try again. So it's that whole process of and embracing failure as part of the whole process of creativity, of learning, and of gradually improving. And definitely over time, something will shift. What will happen is your work starts to feel more intentional, you'll be more consistent, um, it will be more of you. And one of the other things I say that I like to share, I guess, is that when you're when you are using photography or when you're doing photography, obviously there are different elements to it. There's knowing the gear, um, there's understanding how the camera works, how to use it, how to get different different types of result, all that kind of thing. The the the most important thing you can do is get consistent in each area. If and it doesn't matter how good or bad you are initially, because you're probably going to be bad at everything or most things, but at least be consistently bad. Because if you're consistent, you know what you were doing, you can repeat things. So if you're doing something and it's not giving you the result that you want, you can look at how you tweet that. And I've already spoken about that and given examples of skills you can develop. But when you're consistently bad, you can be consistently not quite so bad, you can be consistently, you know, average and then consistently above average, and then consistently good. So this is where that aspect of turning up paying attention, trying, failing, reviewing, and having another go that's where it really pays off because you will be consistent, but the level that you're being consistent at will improve as as you keep working through that process. So I think wherever you are right now, however happy you are with what you're doing, or unhappy, or wherever you're you're at with it, just keep going. Because the the the truth of all this is that the image the the images you want to create, what you're ultimately aspiring to, um they're built from the process you're already in. You're already on your way, you're already on your journey to reaching them, and just keep on going is is is the bottom line. So thanks for listening. Um next week I'm going to talk about something totally different, which is um a technical thing, exposure compensation, and are you using it? And what do you know about ISO? So just to go back into something a little bit more technical with the photography, but I hope you found that useful, interesting, and maybe um you're um hopefully you're inspired to just keep on going and get the camera out, get out there, take photographs at least every week, and um see what happens. So please remember to like and subscribe. Um please do remember I have online courses, some are completely self-paced, uh, well, most self-paced actually, um some you just do on your own. I've got short courses running for four and six weeks where you get a module which is four lessons, four short lessons every week, and then there are live sessions every few weeks as well, and um uh Facebook groups and all that kind of stuff, so you can share your work and get feedback. So if you do want to um get involved and take a course of some sort, please have a look at what I'm doing or have a look at what other people are doing. Um, I might not float your boat in terms of how I teach photography. So I think it's really important that if you are investing time and money on a course, that you you go with someone who um you like their style, you like what they do, and that they're able to communicate uh how they're doing it in a way that you can understand and replicate. Okay, that is it. Have a great time. I'll see you next week. Bye for now.