Thesis: You know that you are being persistent enough in creativity when you stick with it until you start trying something that challenges you. The morning I made these images, I found a location that I just wanted to stay in (never mind that the gnats were biting me everywhere and I kind of knew it). The sun was rising, the light was beautiful, the green was verdant, still variegated. And I wanted to stay where I was.
There was a slight breeze. That ends up mattering later.
Flow
Psychologists have described a state of mind in which you slip out of time. Your body exhibits signs. Certain breathing patterns and brainwaves.
It happens when you are challenged just beyond what you have normally done before.
That breeze and the light were challenging me.
The light made me want to stay and take multiple images that I could stack up or stitch together capturing as much detail as possible of the leaves against the brightening sky as well as the detail in dark shadows.
The breeze made my usual techniques impossible. Nothing would line up when I got the images back to the computer.
So I started trying ETTR (Expose To The Right), which is a little difficult because it tends to require longer exposures and a different way of thinking. (That means the shutter is open longer and there is more chance that something will ruin your images. In this case the likely culprit was the breeze moving and blurring the leaves.) But if I timed things right, I could make the exposure between times that the breeze was moving things nearby.
Without ETTR and pressing the shutter button at just the right time, I couldn’t have made this image with the sun in the frame and the detail in the shadows.
Depth
I also wanted the foreground leaves to be as sharp as possible. I knew they couldn’t be perfectly sharp, but I wanted to get as close as I could.
This compounded the longer exposure problem by requiring me to stop down, to reduce the size of the opening allowing light to the sensor. This required an even longer shutter speed!
This combination took full focus. I had to open the lens, focus on something the right distance away, then stop down, then check the histogram and adjust the exposure value lengthening the shutter speed. Then sometimes readjust those factors based on the time I thought I had to work between breezes.
This blissfully fully loaded feeling is part of flow. It means you are concentrating completely.
Flow is not magic
So, I don’t know if this image works. The foreground leaves are not tack sharp. I can imagine it with more depth and detail.
Some writing on flow would make you think that people never make mistakes. I doubt that is true. What they do tend to do is transcend their current abilities in some way. Often there are striking examples from people at the top of their form. But a child of the right age might enter a flow state just stacking blocks… not necessarily in perfect alignment… likely until they fall down.
Flow keeps you trying
But even if it falls down, this photograph represents a three good reminders for me. First, try to keep making images until something feels worth challenging yourself to get. If the light hadn’t been beautiful, and hadn’t inspired me to keep looking for more images, I wouldn’t have pushed the limits the way I did in this one.
Second, and maybe it’s the same thing stated a different way, try to stick to it until you realize that you have hit flow.
Third, flow feels good, even when the challenge is hard. Even if you end up pushing it until you fail. The flow state makes you want to come back for more. And that’s how you’ve gotten so good at stacking blocks that you don’t think about it.
I you keep trying, if you persist until you try something that seems just past the edge of your abilities.
I might look back on this image and decide that it falls down. Though right now, I like it. It represents the best I could do with the equipment and the conditions I had. I like it enough that it inspires me to keep shooting.
How to know when you’ve done enough creatively
In the moment, or even day to day, it can be hard to know if you are working hard enough on your creative pursuit. If you work until you are exhausted, you kill the creativity. If you only do it when you feel inspired, you go in fits and starts and progress only slowly.
For me, staying oriented, along with defining success for a day in a very simple way, and taking small steps until I find something that pushes me a little beyond what I have done before — that’s the sweet spot.
I can’t ask whether flow is happening every moment. That probably would kill it. But when I notice that it has happened, then I know that I am pushing about hard enough.
What do you think? Let me know in a comment or on Instagram or on Twitter. Flickr is where I often share nicer versions of my images.