Weekly challenges have begun! This is our chance for 3 wonderful things:

1. To connect to our greatest creativity by giving ourselves parameters to work within. It might sound weird, but we are often able to thrive the most when we are given confines.
   
2. To think in a totally new way. Did you know that if you can force your brain out of it’s comfort zone on a daily basis, you will be more likely to make bolder, more empowered decisions?
   
3. To be featured! At the end of each weekly challenge I will choose a few images to feature. All you have to do is use the hashtag #PromotingPassionChallenge on socials and I’ll find ya!

For this week’s challenge, take this theme liberally and do what you want with it! My work and examples happen to be surreal, but yours doesn’t have to be! GO FOR IT!

I’ll pull some of the art that I see this week to feature!
Use the hashtag #PromotingPassionChallenge so I can find you!

Here is some food for thought. Enjoy the challenge, and remember to push yourself creatively!

The creative process. Is it usually the same for you each time you create, or is it different? Maybe even drastically different? Do you know what to expect or is it a surprise?

I work from routine best, so my shoots usually go to plan, or at least follow very similar steps. Here are most common steps for my shooting process, as you’ll see from start to finish in this in-depth video:

1. Brainstorm
2. Sketch
3. Write
4. Costume/Props
5. Set the camera
6. Test shot
7. Shoot
8. Cull images
9. Edit image
10. Share!

I often wish I was different so that I could embody more of a traditional artist spirit. For example possessing any of the following traits would be kind of great: wanderlust, spontaneity, or fits of inspiration.

Well, that third one does happen sometimes. But in general, I am predictable and even-keeled. That doesn’t mean that I don’t surprise myself, that I am not wildly inspired, or that I don’t enjoy a big adventure. Simply, that I don’t thrive under those conditions all the time. I love to work with a list, an itinerary, and a closely monitored clock.

I actually attribute these characteristics in myself to success. Because of my frighteningly equal split of Type A and Type B personalities, I can focus, understand my tasks, and get work done efficiently. But, because I am naturally creative, I have lofty dreams, big ambitions, and a wild imagination. They work in really good unison and harmony to create steadfast creativity.

Steadfast creativity. What is it?

It is the knowledge that creativity will always be there.

It means not relying on inspiration to strike like lightning.

It’s cultivating what inspires you to draw upon that any time.

I don’t like uncertainty. But I especially don’t like it when it comes to my imagination. I want to know that it is a muscle I have worked so much that it remembers what to do in a pinch.

I think that is why I’ve taken such a step by step approach to photography. It helps me to understand my job, which frees up my mind to focus on more creative tasks. If I’m confused by my process, I can’t focus on my creativity. Plain and simple.

So, that’s my creative process! What is yours? How do you work best?

Although the name of this post is a literal representation of what our video shows today (because I’m an early bird and I am constantly early to everything, including the sunrise)…it is also a metaphorical nod at what I really want to dig into.

Working alone.

And I don’t just mean physically. In this new video we take a look at how I work 100% alone when I go out on shoots. That means using myself as a model while thinking about everything a photographer must consider: light quality/direction, background, lens choice, angle, wardrobe, props, pose, exposure settings, etc.

You work alone. I work alone. At some point, we find ourselves utterly alone.

Even if not literally – maybe you work in an office with people or have a loving partner or friends – but eventually, you will find yourself with a dream that only you has, and you won’t know how to achieve it. Your friends will think you’re a little nuts, the internet won’t give you any great answers, and you’re left alone.

That is the darkness I’m talking about. The want-it-so-bad-but-can’t-find-help kind of darkness. What to do? I think I’ve made a game out of working alone, or at least that’s how it feels. I’ve done it for so long and in so many ways.

“We have to continually be jumping off cliffs
and developing our wings on the way down.”
– Kurt Vonnegut

I’ve put together a list of what I’ve learned from being a professional loner.

1. Your mistakes will not break you.

The first time I wrote to galleries I was 22 years old. I put 100 gallery emails, after a ton of research, in the TO line of my email. Not the BCC line…And I hit send. It was a terrible move, the kind that many less optimistic people would give up at after receiving some very harsh emails back, such as I did.

Here’s the point in my telling you this. Nothing really matters. If you mess up trying to walk through one door, the world doesn’t close all other doors. I messed up a lot. I did stupid things like that mass email. I made prints and dented and scratched them. I misprinted. I broke frames in transit. I didn’t insure my pieces and they got damaged. I didn’t know how to talk to galleries. I wrote unprofessional emails. And despite making a TERRIBLE impression on a LOT of people, I still managed a career.

Please, please, I’m begging you: stop believing that one mistake will lead to your downfall. In my experience, the easiest way to fail at your goal is to stop trying because you made a mistake, not because of the mistake itself.

2. No one knows anything.

People look like they know a lot. People want you to think they know a lot. And some people do. About their industry, about their journey, but not about yours.

You know how we’re all adults pretending to be grown up but we’re not really grown up, we’re just pretending? What’s that? You don’t know what I’m talking about, and you really are a grown up and an adult at the same time? Well then, I misjudged you. But for the vast majority of us, we’re guessing. We’re playing this game where we look like adults and so we try to do things that make us adults, but really we’re children inside navigating a giant and scary world.

Don’t count on anyone to guide you. Don’t count on anyone to know your path. Just guess at it, like we do everything else.

Let’s get that straight right from the get-go. Yes, some people have been successful. Maybe even in what you’re looking to do. Yes, some people make a lot of money. Maybe even in what you’re looking to do. But if you try to pursue the same avenue they did, it won’t work. The more creative your endeavor, the more solidly you can expect that to be true.

Let’s take my journey as a fine art photographer. My dream was to exhibit in galleries. I asked around and couldn’t find any consistent advice.

“Make a ton of prints at once and then try to sell those over a few years,” one person told me. “Make prints as they are ordered and don’t waste your money,” another person said. “Number your prints out of 200” versus “number your prints out of 5″…and so on.

And yet, it worked out.

3. Could you please commit to being weird already?!

The most successful people (and I’m using successful not only to mean monetarily, but also through innovation and creativity) are people who did things differently. They thought differently, created differently, and dreamed differently.

You are an artist. You are already different – other, unusual, outside – so you know what it means to think differently. If someone said to you, “Your art is the same as everyone else’s art,” you would take that as an insult. But if someone said, “Your business is the same as everyone else’s business,” you might feel relief that you’re doing it “right”.

Something is broken in how we work. Artists should embrace the unknown in every aspect of what they do.

4. Stop searching the internet. Search your brain instead.

This will sound harsh, but think about it before you judge me:

How often do you reach for the closest search engine when you have a question, be it the never ending wait, what is that actor’s name?! to how do I become a professional artist?!, or some variation thereof?

Classes, workshops, mentors, Google searches, emails to professionals…it never stops.

What if you gave yourself a challenge that for one month you had to make every decision based on really and truly thinking it through with no outside aid, not even running it past a friend, coupled with a little help from your guts – your intuition?

Could you get through a month like that? I don’t think I know many people who are willing to make big decisions, especially about their creativity and business, without looking up something comparable.

I think this is severely hurting our ability to take risks and be confident in ourselves. We are so constantly looking for validation in our choices that it has become part of our habitual process. This needs to stop.

5. Failure to Fail.

I believe that because we are so unwilling to fail at so many things, we have developed an ironic failure to fail. Call it F to F syndrome. It happens when we are so afraid of messing up that we a) do nothing at all, or b) look for an exact roadmap until we start becoming someone else.

The shoe doesn’t fit. Stagnation does not become us. And the only way out is to make time to fail, and recognize that we will also, most likely, find the time to succeed.

I am most proud of my willingness to fail.

I fail at photo shoots about once ever 2 weeks or more. I fail at business attempts a few times a week. I receive rejection emails, I am told no often. I hear silence most of the time when I send an email out into the void.

Sometimes I end up covered in molasses half naked in the woods with no one around to help me and a picture that looks like crap.

You know, normal stuff.

And despite that…

No, because of that…

I feel that I am more successful than I have ever been, and certainly more so than I ever expected.

Listen, a lot goes into success. It isn’t just trying hard and trying often, trusting yourself and making mistakes. It is about producing great work. It is about developing a great work ethic. It is about learning and education – yes, take those workshops, put in those hours. But don’t let it be a crutch. Be great in your own right, not in someone else’s.

Today for White Wall Wednesday I celebrate this unique, personal, fulfilling and difficult journey we are all on. Today is another day. A day to say:

Screw this, I’m making choices for myself and by myself.
My failures will not end me and my successes will buoy me.

How will you proudly push
forward in your own darkness?

Leave a comment.

I’ve been pretty quiet on the video front even though it’s my favorite way of connecting. Travel, working through my art, you know, the usual! But I’m back and creating with you and I can’t wait for you to see this one!

The spirit of White Wall Wednesday is being creative in the space that you have. There are three main ways of doing this:

1. Move your subject to a new background by learning compositing.
2. Transform your wall into a different space rather than cutting your subject. Maybe use set design or composite elements in to make it more interesting.
3. Use an interesting prop or costume so that the blank white wall feels appropriately minimalist.

I went with approach #3 today, and I hope you like the result. But it’s not finished! This is part one of a two part WWW series. I’ve gone ahead and printed this image, and next week I’ll share some experimenting (really, really experimenting because I’ve never done anything like this before!) of how we could further transform the image without any digital techniques. We’re diving into alternative processes!

Share links with me here, or tag them on social media with #WhiteWallWednesday.

For a while there (and I mean the past year and a half), I found it really difficult to create. My ideas seem half-formed, and every time I thought I should be shooting, I just didn’t want to. It was a tough period of time. Last week, after I got home from Promoting Passion, something changed. I took a few days for myself, but then my desire and drive came back. I did an impromptu photo shoot for my new series and I loved it. I shot this yarn image and loved it. I ran outside chasing the fog and had such an amazing time. I edited a couple of photos I had left sitting.

Suddenly I had the energy and excitement for the things I’ve always loved but had put aside. And I realized that my problem was not actually energy or excitement, it was fear.

Isn’t it always?

I’m hesitant to use the word fear because of how flamboyantly it gets tossed around. I didn’t have a direct fear of failure or fear of wasting my time. It was more of a subtle, very-difficult-to-notice fear; a culmination of shoots gone wrong, money wasted, time not spent wisely, laziness with my techniques…and that all built up into an anxiety over creating.

I mentioned in my PPC post that something in me broke. And it was a really, really good kind of breaking. A necessary snap to put me back where I was, but better and more self-aware.

Shooting feels fun again. I want to create. I want to fail. I want to wake up before the sun and run barefoot in a field. I want to shoot on my white wall and take back the power that comes from that.

The power that comes from a white wall. That’s why I do these videos. There is a certain power that comes from shooting with what you have and making it work. Even more power from making it amazing. And even more power from doing it no matter how it turns out. White Wall Wednesday is a taking back of creativity and telling roadblocks to move out of the way, politely, because we’re here to create.

So friends, I hope you embrace your white wall this week. Get some yarn and create whatever it is you want to create. There are no expectations here, except to make something. The very act of creating is where inspiration comes from. The finished product is such a small percentage of the process that we can’t put so much stock in it. What if we only aimed to have a great experience making something? Think of how your art would change.

Happy White Wall Wednesday.

In the photo world, there seems to always be a debate about technique vs. concept. Some people feel passionately about technique and are very technically minded. Some people focus on the concept and say to heck with the technique. I fall into the latter category, if any, but that doesn’t mean that I dismiss technique altogether. In fact, for a while there I was so far on the side of dismissing technique that I had to pull myself back, and one big thing did that for me:

Portfolio reviews and competitions. I review a lot of portfolios, and I noticed two things.

1. A lot of people have great technique but not-so-great ideas, and…
2. A lot of other people have great ideas and not-so-great technique.

It really does take both. If your technique is flawed, the concept won’t really matter. The viewer just won’t get past the technique.

I’ve always been a believer in editing a picture until it looks and feels right; that doesn’t mean I’ve always followed through with that. I’ve certainly posted pictures online that could have been better, but impatience got the better of me. I’ve shot pictures in poor light or of bad quality simply because it was easier or faster.

But over time, I’ve come to appreciate pairing good technique with good ideas. The combination is the only thing that will propel my career. So, today I’m focusing on technique!

In this video, I…

• Pull back the Photoshop layers to glimpse at the original images before editing.
• Take a look at what my SOOC (straight out of camera) pictures were like, what decisions went into the edit, and how they ended up the way they did.
• See how I made stuffing come out of my back, created a long, swirly dress out of a bed sheet, and changed a nearly white dress to deep red.

And more, of course.

I hope you enjoy this glimpse inside. And tell me…

What technique from the video did you like best?

What is your favorite technique in your craft?

These images are available as limited edition, fine art prints on thick, matte fine art paper. Each print is proofed and signed by me, as well as numbered. Print prices begin at $450 for my small size. A number of galleries carry my work, and if you are interested in owning a piece, get in touch with the gallery nearest you: http://www.brookeshaden.com/prints

If you would like to see how I edit more in depth, check out one of my Creative Live classes for hours upon hours of photo, editing, business, and inspiration education: http://www.brookeshaden.com/classes

I think that we have an innate desire to put our stamp on things, whether that is as a person, as an artist, or something else. In my years of teaching photography, I’ve never once conducted a workshop in which no one asked how to build a recognizable style. I’ve asked myself that question plenty of times.

It is a beautiful thing to look at someone’s work and know, without looking at the name, who made it. Those are my favorite artists. Their essence is in their art. It feels like a natural shine.

As an artist, I have thought about this topic for years. What makes someone stand out as being original? What makes someone’s work recognizable? What makes mine?

Here’s the truest answer. More true than any technique in Photoshop or lens choice.

If you don’t like that answer, you’re not going to find what you’re looking for. If you’re looking for a certain technique to set you apart, stop.

Yes, they help tremendously. Yes, they can make you stand out. Yes, they are the medium that us visual artists exist in.

BUT, and I believe this firmly, there isn’t a successful artist out there who doesn’t have their art in their bones.

If you gave your favorite artist a guitar instead of a camera, it’s very likely that their original music would match their original images.

What we want our art to look like is in us from the beginning. From Day 0.

My art is not just what it looks like or feels like. It is the culmination of who I am – visually, emotionally, experiences and reactions and decisions combined. It is my expression of myself.

That is not to say that finding a style is instant. Why? Because we hardly know ourselves. The more we understand who we are, the more fluidly our style can evolve.

At least that’s what I believe. And I really, really believe it.

There are certain visual ways that my style has evolved. I used to create very monochromatic images, almost always indoors. I shifted from that to incorporating more color in my wardrobe and visiting new locations outdoors. I then started to get into more complicated composites, more detailed sets, more props. I evolved. And I am evolving.

If I had to choose 3 visual cues to my signature style, I would say:

Square Format
Yellow highlights/blue shadows
Painterly

There are more:

Feminine
Dark
Cinematic

It’s hard to define a style with just a few words, and not entirely productive, either. We shouldn’t feel trapped by a style, but able and willing to move in and out of it.

I used to fear my style. I felt stuck in it. But now I recognize that my style is mine because that is what naturally comes out of me. No matter what I pursue, it will be mine.

I hope you enjoy this video detailing how I found my style and a few different tricks in the editing room to achieve a polish to my work.

How do you describe your style?
How do you hope to evolve?

My friends, I struggle a lot with sharing technical information. Not because I want to keep it a secret, but because I prefer the focus be put on creativity over tools, on imagination over technology. However, I also love Love LOVE to share as much as I can with others, technical or otherwise, so that we can all be elevated.

This week I answered a swelling call I’ve been receiving to go into a little more depth about editing. This video is a juicy ten minutes of Photoshop explanation, philosophy, and the editing of a new image.

I am self taught in Photoshop with the aid of my husband for the extra-technical bits.

This is how I believe I was able to teach myself Photoshop:

I only researched exactly what I needed. I never went to workshops or watched classes because that was information overload for me. Instead, I put an image in Photoshop. Then, I decided the one most important thing that the image needed, and I searched for that one tool. Little by little I was able to learn Photoshop, and here I am today.

If you are just starting out – with anything – remember to take small steps. They add up to a sum greater than we think possible. Nothing is beyond our reach. I have to believe that because my life is based on it. Little by little, our reach grows; we are expansive.

In the video you will see me use all of my favorite Photoshop tools, like curves, lasso, and feather. They will help me to…

Composite extra hands into my picture
Expand my frame
Add fog to the background
Change the light and color

…and more.

If you want to learn how I edit in depth, I encourage you to check out my online classes.

I get a lot of requests to put full-length editing tutorials online. While I totally understand the request, for now I’m pointing you to my online tutorials.

Why? Because I put months and months of my heart/soul/energy/time/money into them to make them as comprehensive and perfect as I could for you, and in turn, it allows me to be supported in my art. I thank you so much for buying them and showing me that my weird vision is worthwhile.

What is your favorite tool to create with?
How often do you actively seek to learn something new?

Model: Steph Perez

I suddenly went from almost never reading to reading 45 books in a year. This blog post is about how to achieve that kind of result…I think.

I went from doing a job that I hated to a job that I loved.
I went from letting emails pile for months to answering on a 24 hour cycle.
I went from never keeping receipts to doing taxes monthly.
I went from being judgmental and difficult to easy going.

A week ago my husband said something to me that surprised me. He told me that one of the things he loves most about me is my willingness to change. I had never seen myself that way before, but since he saw it, I thought it was time to try. I asked for examples, and what I listed above is some of what he said.

Sometimes we are stubborn, difficult animals. We cling to who we are because that’s all we know. We don’t want to be surprised by the one thing we can control: ourselves.

I’ve always had a misplaced and singular view that I am right. About what, you might ask? Anything? Everything?
Anyone else ever feel that way?

…I felt certain about how we should feel, how we should act, what kind of life is the best life, what kind of life is the worst.

I didn’t listen to opinions very easily. I was not going to let myself be molded by someone else.

At some point in the last half a decade, I became savvy to the idea that there is always more to learn. I became obsessed with curiosity. I wanted to be better than the person I was. And I realized something important: In order to be a better person, I had to see myself from another vantage point.

I started to look at my life from a bird’s perspective…and since I’m a visual person, I mean that very literally. I pretended I was looking down at my life from above and I noted what I saw. What did my routines look like? How was I treating the people around me? Where did I spend most of my time, and for how long? Did I look good or unhealthy? What areas of my life were causing stress, and alternately, joy?

I am a big fan of the idea that having fewer amazing parts of your life is better than having many mediocre ones. I don’t keep a lot of close friends, I don’t have a lot of hobbies. Simply put, I don’t make time for what doesn’t serve me.

How, then, do I know what serves me?

1. Give yourself an honesty pep-talk. Being honest with yourself is extremely difficult. It means that you have to acknowledge years of expectations (your own and others) and be willing to throw them away. It means you have to be willing to take chances where before you would never. Honesty is a difficult thing. It is much easier to keep living a lie than to shift into a space of truth. The moment you admit the truth, it becomes real.
2. Write a list of ONLY 3 priorities. Hint: It is okay for money to be one of them. How much money, however, is up for debate. Your lifestyle and what you’re used to may not factor in anymore. If you had to limit yourself to only 3 priorities in your life – the ones that give you the most joy – what are they? Mine are: Creativity, Conversation, Home.
3. Imagine yourself on your deathbed. Really – imagine that you are an old man or woman and you’ve made it to the other side of this life, the finish line. You’re happy and relatively healthy and you’re looking back at what you’ve done. What does it look like? What did your life shape up to be? What events defined it? What choices moved it forward? When you examine your best life (note, not said in the offhanded way that I’ve been seeing a lot of) can you map out the decisions that need to take place to get you there?

Once you’ve figured out what serves you, it’s time to change. I mean really change.

I’m very fortunate because commitment has always been high on my short strengths list. When my husband and I decided at 16 that we wanted to get married, we were dead serious (we’ve been together 15 years this year). When I decided I wanted to quit my job and become a photographer, I did it fast and I did it wholeheartedly (that was 8 years ago). When I switched from an entirely meat-eating diet to vegan overnight, it was not so much a choice as a compulsion (that was 6 years ago). I can commit.

But when I break down why I’m able to commit, it has less to do with natural abilities and more to do with vision. I can commit to something because I can see the future.

Not like a psychic. More like an old soul.

It is very easy for me to see a choice and then see how the consequences of each choice will impact my life. If this doesn’t come easy for you, I recommend getting trained up in the ways of visionary know-how. This is not to say I always get it right (who does?) but that I work at it a lot.

How do we become more proficient in seeing our future?

We dream. We dream often, we dream big, we dream small, we manifest.

That might sound crazy but it is the truth. If we take time to think about the questions I asked above, about our priorities and our wishes and our lives, we start to understand exactly the type of life we want to live. That knowledge becomes available to us in ways that it wasn’t before. It becomes a part of who we are and will be. Dreaming shapes our future so that when we get there, we’re ready.

Here is something predictable about humans: the more we sit with something, the more comfortable we become. Unless it’s clowns.

If we let an idea settle in our minds, it becomes less and less intimidating to carry out. If we keep the same friends for a long time, we become comfortable. If we do the same job for years, we find ourselves in a routine.

The natural conclusion, then, is this: If you let yourself dream of your perfect life often enough, then taking the steps to actually achieve it are more likely to happen. It has already happened in your mind plenty of times like practice runs.

How did I start reading 45 books a year?

I forced myself to look honestly at what I wanted in my life.
I wrote down my priorities.
I shaped my life.

All to make time for reading.

(The background of this is that I want to be a writer, and I believed I needed to be a reader to be a good writer, so I made a change that would lead to my successful future).

So you see, it was never about reading. It was about what I value in my life, where I want my life to go, and how I want to get there.

Creativity
Conversation
Home

All three of those priorities point me in the direction I need to go. For every idea I have, I ask myself this simple question: Does this idea serve one or more of my three priorities? If yes, I move forward. If not, I let it go.

What serves you?
I’d really like to hear your feelings on this topic.

I have always loved photographing bandages because of how timeless they are while being sad and a signifier of pain at the same time. Old and sad are my favorites. I have been using these bandages since I started taking pictures. I had a vision of a group of girls standing in a circle, abandoned, scared to look out from the bandages that have kept them in the dark.

To me, bravery looks like the person who would peer out from behind the mask they wear to show the world who they are, despite what anyone might say about it. It is the one in the group who looks first, not knowing what they will see, and then encourages others to open their eyes. At some point in our lives, we could all use the encouragement to open our eyes when darkness is much more comforting.

I hope that no matter what you are going through you find the courage to look out at your world with your very own unique eyes and cast your gaze upon it’s wonders. You are sure to change the landscape just by being open to seeing it.

P.S. Very soon I’m releasing a brand new PAY WHAT YOU CAN challenge that I’m so excited for. You’ve got a 50 page e-book coming, daily emails, and all the guidance you could need to take on a CONTENT CREATION challenge. WAHOO!

I’ve shared a very heartfelt message in my video today, so I hope you’ll have a good watch. Which leaves me free to share with you the real title of this blog post: “Why NOT to Snooze”.

This morning I had my alarm set for 4:10am. The alarm went off, and I was very tired, so I did something that I never, ever do: I hit my snooze button. I am usually bolting out of bed right when the first sound goes off, so it was very odd that I didn’t get right out of bed today. Instead, I opted for five more minutes. I already know that five minutes doesn’t do anything or make me feel any better, but there it was. I did it. And now, I regret it.

In those five minutes (technically four, because I woke up one minute before my next alarm), I had a dream. A nightmare, more accurately. I have them all the time, almost every night, so it wasn’t unusual. Just ill-timed.

Cue wake-up.

Cue me frantically re-thinking my shooting location.

Cue me saying “drats” and getting in the car and going anyway.

I got there and had an awful sense of foreboding. In the span of one minute I was certain I was going to a) get arrested, b) find a dead body, or c) somehow drown in the 3 feet of water I was in and never be heard from again.

And then I remembered my camera sitting there and felt the rock hard, well, rocks, under my knees and I was drawn back to reality. I shot for only about two minutes before I got out of there, lest any of my premonitions come true. My dress kept sinking in the back and hitting my leg and I was certain it was a dead hand coming to grab me.

I blame this one two things: one is my dream. The other is the book series I’m currently reading about Necromancers. Either way, it was unpleasant. I was only able to giggle at myself when I got into my car, turned on A Fine Frenzy to make me feel calm and connected again, and I was driving away from my shooting space.

And then, I turned and saw a rainbow. Funny how these things work out.

Day 22, you scoundrel.

I’m off to work on some very special content for you that I can’t wait to share. Saturday brings diligent planning and homemade pizza and reading. Aside from that extra five minutes of “sleep”, it has been a pretty amazing one.