What is happening to creativity?

I'm seeing more of the same coming out of generative AI on social media. It is often nicely rendered but devoid of meaning, usually not quite right but puzzling rather than thought-provoking.

prompt: "More of the Same AI Social Media"

The Utopian view of social media is it will allow everyone to show and sell their wares and share ideas with anyone world wide. The reality is a lot different the limited number of places are clogged with wanna bee celebrities, their followers, copycats and a lot of anti-social behaviour. Anything originally creative that is good is swapped in copies and quickly becomes impossible to find. It is only the social media giants making ridiculous amounts of money from the "content" supplied (mostly for free). The change of ideas soon becomes closed in a self-fulfilling bubble that simply feed others in the group with what they want to hear (seldom the truth). It's all very sad.

I now see similar rhetoric being promoted for a utopian world we will be all using AI tools instead of employing or paying others. Already I can see a rush with everyone is trying to cash in, chasing money for nothing, from the likes of chatGPT in just seconds! The Net is filling with lots of sameness that is largely vaporware and again not quite right (full of bias, oversights and untruths). Bit sad really.

However, I just hope that the hype just dies away and the artist, creatives and makers get time to quietly try out the new tools. Mainly to get more productive and build a social place where they own the creative content (not just copying someone else style using a short prompt) but truly making something.

I like Danny Gregory’s weekly essays and this week was aimed at those who refuse to be creative.

Good timely advice. 

Creativity in name, not so much in practice

Whilst I have long since stopped using Lightroom and other Adobe products, I do still take a keen interest in what is going on at Adobe and more particularly what they are working on. So I have been attending the virtual aspects of adobe’s big MAX conference for the last few years.

Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen described how the company is determined to develop "AI for social good” in his keynote address. They are certainly using AI within many of their tools. Creating a wealth of “one-click”, “fix-it”, “make it better” tools within their existing suites of applications. For sure it will take a lot of tedious hack work out of making visual images and video, but I don’t think this is going to re-assure the real creatives worried about the rise of AI art.

One really obvious theme is everything is moving to video (or at least animated images) and the general idea of creativity is all about building a social media space, going viral, capturing the hearts and mind in a few second, possible in a 2D becoming meta 3D style, design assets and brand kit consistency, again with that “single click” aspect dominating. Sounds like a lot of the sameness, everyone clicking on the same few links and expecting originally and creativity may actually result with more and more of the same!

The hyped “new” tool Adobe Express has a lot of the look and feel of Canva, perhaps with nicer integration with other adobe tools (so you need to pay more rent), The photographic enhancements in lightroom and photoshop are mainly not new and exciting, being offered in a number of other pieces of software, just not integrated so again you have to spend more renting it all. The sneaks segment usually my favourite to see what new technology might be coming up was a disappointment. Perhaps with the exception of project blink (for AI-powered video editing on the web)

I did like the short presentation by Relu Ou on "the myths and realities about Artifical Intelligence", Particularly his closing remark “Please let your imagination direct how you use these tools.”

Wednesday Wanderers and the Flow State

The wanderers began by happen-chance. Three of us started our own small plein air painting/sketching group out in the real world. Soon after Victoria began it first lock down and after a couple of rocky test, we started meeting on zoom on Wednesday at 10:00am. It was a welcome get together and we started painting a shared photo supplied by one of the participants since it was the free zoom meeting we only had 40 minutes for the session before we got cut off. Not a lot of time to carry out a watercolour painting of a scene you had not seen before.

The Watercolours Society of Victoria had purchased the Pro version of zoom and kindly allowed us to use their service so we were no longer bound by the 40 minute limit but kept the rough timing and format.

There is a Chinese proverb attributed to Lao Tzu

“If you are depressed you are living in the past.
If you are anxious you are living in the future.
If you are at peace you are living in the present.”

It is this being in the present when you are painting, that probably explains lot of the popularity of the Wanderers

Mihaly Explains [watercolour on Canvas by Norm Hanson]

I believe it has a lot to do with helping the participants slip into what the Psychologist Mihály Csíkszentmihályi identified and calls the Flow State. In which the duration of time is altered, hours pass in minutes, minutes can stretch out to seem like hours.

After interviewing many successful people for his study of the Psychology of Optimal Experience, he concluded that there were seven common experiences shared by these people. He calls these the Elements of Enjoyment

1. Confronted by a task, with a chance of completing it.
2. Be able to concentrate on the task
3. Task has a clear goal
4. Immediate Feedback
5. Could participate with a deep but effortless involvement (remove from the constraints and frustration of every day life)
6. Be enjoyable (allowing people to exercise control over the actions)
7.  Concern for self disappears (yet paradoxically the feeling of self emerges stronger after the flow is over.

Mihaly liked to explain this in two dimensions, the challenge versus skills.

He believes you can most easily move into flow if you are aroused (but anxious) by the challenge and you take the opportunity to practise and improve your skills, or you are confident in your skill (but bored) until you get inspired by the challenge. Flow occurs when a task’s challenge is balanced with one’s skill.

A very important aspect of the Wanderers is the group dynamic. Mihaly studied and advised many sporting groups including the successful  Australian Women’s Hockey team, Australian Olympics cyclists and ice skaters. He lists these important characteristics for teams to Achieve Flow and thus improve their collective performance by achieving group flow.

1. Group empathy (including helping others to achieve their desired performance)
2. Activity has clear goal
3. Opportunity to be both autonomous and at the same time cooperating in the group.
4. Immediate feedback (both personally and shared with the team)
5. Skill required matches the difficulty of the task. Some individuals can focus on different skills 

Whilst we were not always in focused together, and seldom on all aspects. Those participating were generally focussed in the present challenge testing their skills and often reaching the flow state.  Mihaly says it is this flow that allows the enjoyment of experiencing that you are good at something while you are doing it. It didn’t matter so much if you had or had not finished or looked the same as others.

 Norm Hanson
Febraury 2022

Chasing likes on an algorithm can be the enemy of innovation & creativity.

Today I found a blog post by Dave Morrow "Why Your Photography Business Will Fail & How to Succeed"

The beginning of the article gave me important extra insight into something that has been bothering me for a while now. It nicely summarizes the idea that Big is Power, it follows social media viral hype, looks for short term gain and elevates those with millions of followers, likes, clicks, and shares. Unfortunately this "Big is the goal of the masses. It's their undefined version of success" (I'm quoting Dave) When you add this to an algorithm that focuses on severing up things that might keep you on the screen a little longer you get lost in a bubble of wanna-be celebrity and replicants, things may get to look glossy but artificial (they probably are) and endlessly much the same (eg. @insta_repeat)

View this post on Instagram

I’m coming back but while you wait, here are 120 tents (tags/credits in original posts) ⛺️ #inspirationalquote #simulacra #internettroll #copyofacopy #moodygrams #instarepeat #dejavuvibes #bummervibes #beforeitwasmainstream #thehyperreal

A post shared by Insta Repeat (@insta_repeat) on Jun 27, 2019 at 9:35am PDT

Yet the internet and social media should in theory offer the opportunity for the innovators and creatives to show their work to many others. Moreover the capability of desktop computers and even smart phones with apps that link directly to social media sites enable distribution of work in a single click. A creative should be free to experiment and post anything they like.

Why doesn't this happened? It just like shouting into the wind, the original and creative messages usually gets lost and quickly blows way.

There are ways to overcome this and Dave suggest the answer lies in thinking and acting Small. I must agree. Small lets a creative person target works they care about, experiment, become proficient in the craft required to create their work. They should also look to find other like-minded people (through on-line groups, perhaps blogs, #hashtags or even You Tube or Instagram) and correspond with those similar souls through comments, DMs and personal emails. Establishing trust here is all important. Finding an audience that appreciate the originality and creativity is as important as the work itself.

"The creator’s only cost is time, hard work, and a long term belief in their own ideas." (quoting Dave again)

Roadtrips, the Death of Creativity & the Continuous Sketch

I had the brilliant idea back when I started planning this year long project, to build a series of sketches into a continuous panorama. Each place I visited should form part of the total picture, they thus needed to loosely join each other (eg match horizon and tonal blends. So I recognized that occasionally and intermediate image might be needed for a difficult transition.

I soon found out this wasn’t a particularly original idea, but I wasn’t deterred. I even experimented with a few sketches to get the best size (which was quarter watercolour sheets, around 28 by 18cm and in landscape mode. I even though these could be scanned and reduced onto cards. However there was a bit of a time oversight, on the road and travelling (Australia) is a big country and getting between places I wanted to visits take a lot of time) left no time to stop and work on the idea. So very few sketches got completed. If I tried to remember what the road trip saw a few days later I could perhaps describe it but not draw it convincingly. Clearly my visual memory requires a bit of time to work. So I gave my canon to my wife and said take pictures out the window every now and them as we passed through different country. Ok, Now I have a lot of blurred photos.

The photographer is not to blame, my wife has a good eye for what to photograph. It is the speed of car travel, and trying to anticipate the gaps between tress, landposts and countless other obstacles. Still I should be able to take a trees from here the tone and texture from another and the colour balance perhaps from a thirds. Again sounded simple but I always ended up trying to slavishly copy the little amount of detail I could get in the glimpse of in focus landscape.

Then I realized something important, that has be nagging at me for a long time now. I find it very hard to start a painting from a single photo. I’m much happier is I have a sketch I have made, even if it is a very simple composition or tonal layout study. I’m not convinced I’m alone here. Perhaps the time to sketch slows you down an ramps up your visual seeing rather than the symbolic seeing, as the landscape flashes by.  Further the act of drawing reinforces that visual sight and lets you focus on the important aspects of creating something. You come tp terms with the detail that is not required and are happy to leave it, whereas the snapshot records it as if it is important.

However, I’ve lost enthusiasm for the continuous sketch project. So The moral is…

Lots of driving and no drawing kills creativity

Playing with the Frames in Instagram

Instagram is VERY simple, which may explain its appeal. Whilst I don’t mind the square format it can be restrictive AND I like to side step or find my way around such restriction. Since “there be where creativity lies”.

I am quite used to making multi-image paintings, so it occurred to me (after I’d downloaded the windows 10 Instagram app) why now move out of a single frame!

Time for a coffee & creative ideas

Its later in the afternoon and not a daily photo taken yet. So I was finishing a coffee and contemplating what to do. I had an idea to try a series of my self looking at the camera and painting as if it was a self portrait, perhaps to make into a time series collage. So I set up my canon on my tripod and set it to take a series of images. I finished my coffee and then played with the brush.

However it was one of those session where nothing worked as planned. Just as the cameras started firing the sun came out, brilliantly, casting unfortunate shadows. The camera was still manually focused, and everything turned out  blurry. There where many other problems especially that I had other more urgent duties to attend to, so I didn’t get a chance to repeat the photos. All I had was 12 terrible exposures, normally they would be deleted BUT I often tell people to keep a few rejects to experiment on. These were terrible and thus perfect for an experiment. My first thoughts was to try some simple dreamscope transforms and build the collage, but the three initial images of me finishing my coffee told the best story. Yet the simple transforms didn’t exactly look creative enough.

I decided to build three layers, The painting ground I made by leaving the image blurry by increased luminance and saturation. Next I made a simple stipple pattern and used it back in dreamscope as my custom filter, and created some line work. Then I recreated the the final patterned overall with the watercolour cartoon filter. I finally I experimented with OnOne Layers and different blend modes to give a composite image, that was once a rejected photograph.

Different Media Renderings & Creativity continued…

I’ve had some fun with clone painting via corel painter. Just to show that difference media have their own benifits and can bring different athestic aspects to the same subject matter.

Finding creativity by using different tools

I’ve never been a big fan of set work flows and always using presets, I think that approach stifles creativity. However I constantly use a range of different software. So how do I manage to get a consistent style. Well in actual fact I don’t bother, I choose what seems to suit the image, each tools has it strengths and limitations. It was grey and close to dusk so he was flapping his wings to dry them, the movement combined with a telephoto shot low f-stop and low light, my set of photos thus have soft-ish focus and digital noise due to higher ISO. C'est la vie.
First cab off the rank was Picasa, which I normal just use to upload my photos and allows me to quickly review and cull the photoset and perhaps rank the top photos. I tend not to use it to enhance my images, unless i really want something to post on the web or email straight away. It’s jpeg rendering is fine but google’s, “I feel luck approach” often makes the RAW files look dull and perhaps overexposed. I like more tonal range. Here I am editing the JPEG version and using the tuning tab but just clicking on the magic wand to let Picasa set the tonal sliders. I’ve also used the straighten and cropping tools.
I have been using Aftershot Pro as my preferred first look at RAW files on my laptop and have a fairly standard approach of clicking on the perfectly clear filter, then tweaking the details slider and for this photo a little extra raw noise correction. In this case I have toned down the vegetation a little via the Colour Equalizer Plug-in to help highlight the darter. I’ve also used a desaturate vignette along with cropping & straightening.
The RAW photo I am processing with OnOne Photo 10 Suite doesn’t have the detail in the darter, which limits its success somewhat. However I used by very favourite Dynamic Contrast filter to manipulate the tones, opting to enhance the small scale contrast rather that larger scale (which help subdue the trees & reeds in the background) while backing off vibrance and lift the darter. I also used my very favourite vignette the Big Softy.

I ended up breaking my own rule here, using a SDR+ preset I made myself some time ago to stretch the dynamic range in a single RAW photo. To which I tweaked clarity (local tonal contrast) to the right and dropped down the vibrancy a little, Similar crop and straighten to the other photo and finished with a subtle post crop vignette.

The photos are different, not unlike using different media (oils vs acrylic) and have subtly different appeal. Despite the approach to post processing being largely similar. I think the exercise of doing this help become familiar with the tools and what can be achieve. It is a more creative approach than following a rigorous workflow within a single software package. Vive la difference.

ArtInspired :: becoming personal with your media

Click on the image to get it as a free screen wallpaper from flickr 

Something very personal for many artists is their brushes, paints and pens. Maybe its because it can be  a windows into how they might make their marks. However knowing the brand and hue of the colours in the palette, that the artist use number 9 red sable brushes, is not going to help you recreate a master piece.

The artist however know how to use their media. They seldom have to think about the paints or brushes when they are creating their masterpiece. I'm of the opinion camera gear is a lot like that. Gear envy will not help you to taking better photos. Taking photos with a camera at hand (perhaps the one in your phone or an old camera you can get a lend of) is going to become something personal you can rely on.

A decade older, ..but any wiser

This blog turns ten years old today. It began with a simple enough objective, Exploring the Creative Potential of Digital Technology and it is still pretty much wandering around the same themes. If you want to spend a bit of time looking around try the label cloud down on the right or type a topic that interests you into the search box. You won’t find any specific camera reviews, as originally promised, but you may find a lot about ways to use them along the way. Looking at my blog stats, I have improved views from around 1000 a month, when I set up the counter in 2005, to over 2000 now (see graph below). The blips in 2012 to the peak in 2013 were due to link spammers, so I probably need to knock off around 2000-3000 page views from the total. Still 80K is a decent number, not spectacularly popular (or worse viral success) but encouraging to continue all the same.



So my advice is still the same get a camera, especially one you are happy to use (anything from a smartphone, Mirrorless up to a DSLR, they are all good these days) and learn how to use it. I hope the collection of ideas over the last decade helps you see some of the Magic of Digital Photography.

Onwards into the unknown …and more to learn and share as I go

ThePatch :: Is Loneliness a natural part of the Creativity?

The Patch theme this week is Loneliness/Togetherness, which at first looks like an Oxymoron. How can someone be lonely when they are part of togetherness? Yet deep in the creative process there is often that point where you are totally alone in yourself, trying something new, different, original … it is often the point at which the inspiration arises sometimes from deep within, sometimes as a chance observation. Once conceived other aspects of yourself need to kick in, the skill to design, the talent to make your marks and the wisdom to evaluate your creation. This is a perfect scenario for a little “multi-exposed” story of an artist sitting around a table. Now how to do that?
First I took a series of photos of myself in the individual poses, to tell the story. That bit was easy. The camera was on a tripod and you can see the remote control in my hand in the third shot, the one with the red shirt. Next I was keen to have a play with perfect effect 8’s layers capabilities. Alas it can only work on layers within one image, it doesn’t let you stack the layers from a number of images. So first I had to do that in corel photo paint. I little further tweak of the tone and clarity in lightroom, then back into perfect effects. You have to save a copy as a psd (photoshop format) to get the ability to use layer in perfect effects. This time I set up three different layers. The first a texturizer layer, there are dozens but I liked the Rice Paper Vignette, which I set to around 80% opacity. Next I had to set up setting up a mask around the fourth “lonely” me on the right. I used the “perfect brush” to paint in the mask and it did a very good job of stopping at the change of contrast. However it was a bit “laggy” as I used the brush so it was a bit fiddly to use (compared with the same task in corel photo paint). I then copied the mask (a really excellent feature) and pasted that onto my next layer which was a colour saturation control, called not surprisingly color reducer and here I went into the filter options and adjusted then saturation slider back to the left about -20%, rather than use the opacity of the filter. Finally I created another layer and this time using the portrait enhancer and the strong version. I paste the same mask again but this time I selected it in inverse, so what was painted out of the filters in the layers underneath was now painted in on this layer. I did experiment with incorporating another option inside this filter to give cooler colours but I felt the strong colouring suited the now darker image. These steps might sound a bit complex but it was actually relatively simple, not frightening at all! One disappointment was I don’t think I set the feather large enough, because the perfect brush masking was a bit more precise than I expected. Unfortunately once you to commit to save and close the edits in perfect effect you loose the layering and the mask itself. I now know that you can get around this by saving your work as a new preset before you exit. That way you can reload your original, apply your saved preset and have access to all the layers, filters and masks.