John Lennon Memorial, Central Park, NYC

What’s your most essential tool as an artist?  While the right equipment can be an enormous aide to your success, we’ve all seen artists who can create with very little. And who runs all that fancy gear and tells it what to do?

Imagination is what gets the creative process started and keeps it rolling. It’s what drives your whole creative flow, as you can see from Picasso, “I paint objects as I think them, not as I see them.”

Michelangelo said,   “I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free.”  He removed the marble until his vision appeared to others the way he had imagined it.

But if this is such a major tool, why has it been battered down since we were kids? You can remember being hit by zingers like, “that’s just your imagination” or “nice pipe-dream”  Yep, there seems to be those who would just as soon send you to camp bummer as see you as create your next piece of art.

So, if it’s the key to the whole game, then what? Are we all born with a certain amount of it and have to just watch it diminish as we grow up?

How about exercising your imagination? I mean like a regular exercise program.  Yes, you can develop this creative skill, like any other skill that you practice.

Here’s a few ways to do so.

1. Practice pre-visualization of your art. Refer to my book, Advancing Your Photography for details on how to strengthen your visualization “muscles.”
2. Get a notebook-sketchbook and note down your ideas, put your imagination and vision down on paper, and just that simple action helps it comes to life.
3. You can also use your iPhone camera like a sketch pad and shoot patterns, colors, images of all sorts for later use.  That’s how I got the shot above while wandering through Central Park with friends.
4. Look at other artists’ work and imagine how they did it.  Find the parts you love and try it yourself. If you’re shy about this remember one of Steve Jobs’ mantras was what Picasso supposedly uttered, “Bad artists copy. Good artists steal.”
5. Push yourself to try new ways of expressing your art. If you are always shooting landscapes, make yourself go out on the street and capture people, up close.

Try this out and let’s see what happens. You can post any of the above in our Critique Group (even if you’re not a photographer, go ahead.)

Imagine…