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Chip Simons' Ten Tips for Making Creative Images Imaginative photographer Chip Simons offers Ten Tips on how to create creative images Article rating: 8.52

1. Ask a kid what to take pictures of – then just do it. You'll be freer, and your images will probably be better, if you stop taking photography so seriously and learn to play.

2. Pretend you're someone else seeing what you are seeing. If you were a baby, a spaceman, a 110 year old person, a blind person, two feet tall, a dog or a bug, how would what you're seeing appear differently? My major breakthrough in commercial photography came when I got down on the ground and photographed dogs in Central Park as if I was another dog.

3. Don't be obsessed with making something look real. Photography is basically a lie: your subjects are actors and you're showing me what you want me to see. Even in the most so-called objective news photos, you have to remember that often, beside the tragic famine victim there's a CNN news crew eating doughnuts.

4. Remember that there are no rules. You could shoot your toenails every day if you felt like it (though that might not be so interesting for the rest of us). Over four days of shooting in 2006, during what I call my "Black Period," I shot around 6,000 images of individual objects in my house against a black background. People thought I was crazy, but I love those images. I was obsessively cataloging a life I was about to leave, creating a visual archive of things that would never be together in that way again.

5. Get a different camera or change your process. Try an old twin lens, a fisheye, a macro lens – anything that's different from what you do routinely.

6. Tape a camera onto your head and take pictures of people laughing at you. Or try not looking when you shoot. In college, I spent an entire year photographing without looking through the viewfinder.

7. When you think you’ve hit your limit, push yourself a bit further. Come up with one idea, then go find 25 examples or variations on that idea. Or keep going back and revisiting a subject until you get sick of it and can't stand to make one more image.

8. Take a picture of your breakfast, your room or yourself every day, and send it to all your friends. On a deeper level, photography is autobiographical. The better you know yourself, the better you can direct others to act  out ideas and the more sophisticated your ideas will be.

9. Stop making sense. Read more Dr. Seuss. Stop being intelligent, forget what you’ve learned, and don’t be like anyone else. Ninety-nine percent of all photographers take pictures that look the same. There’s nothing wrong with that... but do I have to act interested?

10. Take a day not looking through the camera. Better still, take a month off. Hang out with people who are funny and different. And if anyone looks at your work and says “nice” or “interesting,” RUN!

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	this is outstanding! i know chip well, and this is EXACTLY how is brain works. he's one of the most creative and interesting people i know, and whatever he says about photography...do it! Posted by: will pattison Jun 24, 2008 @ 9:43 AM EST
	buenos consejos Chip Posted by: carlos brignonio Jul 5, 2008 @ 1:44 PM EST
	This is exactly what I needed to read...I am on my way to a dance shoot..and was feeling bored with the whole idea...fabulous ...thanks so much for including this article just when I truly needed it. Posted by: Carolyn D Nov 10, 2008 @ 4:26 PM EST

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