Experiential Photography in 3 Beats
Cultivating joy, self-love, and connection in an experiential photoshoot
Throughout my life there’s been moments of creativity that seemed different from others.
It’s a feeling that the art is pouring out of you effortlessly, mistakes are a thing long forgotten, and there’s a unique harmony between mind and medium. With my background in experience design, I periodically took time to explore those states mentally and see if I could find any patterns to encourage it more in the future.
I would look back on some of my favorite art that I’ve created and ask my self some questions about my own experience...
How was I feeling when I started creating?
How did I react to different stages of the creative journey?
How did I feel when it was over?
I started to look back at the experiences I had shooting my best photographic work and saw a similar structure and cadence. What I found was a bit of a rhythm and pattern that flowed like a micro hero’s journey.
My best photographic work began from an initial feeling of joyfulness within myself, an equal comfort and excitement in my situation and a zest for life.
From there I would find myself appreciating and enjoying loving connections with people around me and more importantly a deep appreciation and love of self.
The next state of creativity feels like that moment in NBA Jam when your character is on fire. Those where the moments when the photos still make me pause months later and appreciate the culmination of events that lead me to create from that state. It’s a connection to the human experience and an appreciation for moments it offers.
I recently set up an experiential photo shoot with some friends and after looking back this pattern seemed to emerge again.
Let’s take a dive in and explore the different experiential states of a photo shoot that cultivated joyful, loving, and connected moments. My hope is that you might see parallels in your own creative flow and find the door to cultivate dynamic creativity through mindfulness in the experience.
Playing with Joy
There’s a certain feeling in starting a creative exploration from a place of comfort. It’s the start of every hero’s journey, the tarot, and countless stories throughout time.
It is also a choice.
I know the beauty that can come from creative exploration into pain, suffering, and darkness, but for this journey we’re going to start from a place of joy.
In this breakdown we’re going to be looking through the lens of a studio photography session among friends.
walking into the room and owning it
For this playful shoot, or any photoshoot in general, I like to put a lot of effort into making the subject feel like they’re a rock star. I want them to feel as if they can step into the room and that they can throw any part of themselves at my camera without fear.
I set up the camera and lights a bit before she arrived on the scene. This internally gave me a sense of joy, a bit of confidence in my own technical abilities, and safe foundational layer to jump into creatively.
In addition I was shooting with my camera tethered to the laptop so she could see the results of the image a few seconds later.
These initial shots in a shoot are an opportunity for someone to just feel good in their own human experience. A pause on the outside world and an exploratory moment to just enjoy being in this creative bubble.
Let your hair down. Play Around a bit.
This initial round of shots lasted for a brief 3 to 4 minutes. It’s a quick burst of creative play.
By starting a shoot from a place of cultivating joy, I’ve found that I’m shooting less but I’m getting more explosive and dynamic images in a short amount of time.
But with all good things, there’s a time period when this moment feels like it’s coming to a close. Almost as if the universe is pulling a Netflix and asking you if you’re still there and want to continue.
continuing the play
When I was getting started in diving into my photography more, this moment used to kill me. There were so many times I felt like I had a grasp on some sort of creative flow but then it went through my fingers.
Like most lessons in life, I needed to look inwards.
I found that I needed to feel gratitude for my initial jump into the unknown, but I also needed to eagerly jump into the unknown once again. During this session I gave some thanks for the creativity that took place by switching roles and jumping on the other side of the camera.
Then it was time to take the shoot in a new direction.
Loving Inner Strength
By jumping into another creative unknown your acknowledging your own inner strength. Much like the hero’s journey, you’ve said that you’ve gotten what you were initially looking for, but now you’ve realized you wanted something different.
Creatively, these moments can be tough. You feel good about what you last made but you’re equally scared wondering if you can capture that same excitement if it goes in another direction.
There’s an opportunity for fear and anxiety to creep in.
But there’s also a chance at again creating something new. This time we’ll focus less on joyfulness and more on loving connection as our experiential North Star.
slowing things down a bit
If you’ve been deep in a creative process, I’m sure you’re familiar with this moment. What started as a fast burst of excitement and fury has now slowed down a bit.
However, if appreciated, each moment can feel more alive and tender at this new slower pace.
There’s a rhythm that takes the chaos of the earlier creativity and slows it down to something that can be reformed. In a similar elasticity, I’ve noticed that my own inner thoughts adjust at the same time.
I feel less fear or uncertainty about my creating and more appreciation that it is coming out of me and not someone else. I’m the one here, in this moment, creating something that didn’t exist before. Its love turned on ones self.
Throughout my creative exploration I’ve messed up this step a lot. I was close, by feeling love and compassion outwards, but it really took a while for me to find the right way to direct that compassion back in on myself.
It’s that compassionate self reflection, I feel, that really opens up the doors for something magical to happen next. You jump back into the unknown creatively with a new skillset that anything that’s supposed to happen will happen. The resistance fades and the creativity flows with abundance.
In this moment I decided to turn off the bright colored strobe lights and illuminate the scene using only one single warm steady light. I was looking for her to feel strength radiating from her body.
Unprompted she struck this pose.
This only took a few attempts to get this shot and once we got it we both agreed that we were ready to move onto the next look.
Instead of me coming up with the color palate I asked her how she was feeling.
Something out of the cosmos…
jumping off into the unknown again
As a photographer, it took me a while to seek out and build upon creative input from someone that I was shooting. It’s easy to get in a thought pattern that they can’t see the results or they don’t know how the equipment works that makes it easy to find excuses for not giving up some creative reigns.
But really it comes down to fear. Fear once again of jumping into the unknown. Only this time you’re jumping down a path you didn’t choose to go down yourself.
You’re being challenged to see if you can equally apply that love in your self back outwardly to trust that anyone else’s input is going to lead you to the actual goal you were looking at finding in the beginning.
Exploring Connected Creativity
As I was changing the lights and replacing color gels I asked her to think about the light differently this time while we were shooting. To imagine it as tiny little particles that could be used to paint her own body with light. Feel the interconnectivity of it all.
This part of the creative flow is easily my favorite. It feels like we’ve gone on a journey to get here, at this point we usually have, and it invites something magical to take place. With my photography I like to say it feels like flying.
The camera feels different and it seems impossible to take a bad photo.
This focus on connection furthers that feeling that Bob Ross always liked to talk about.
We don’t make mistakes, we just have happy accidents.
Not only do I appreciate the photos from this moment by themselves, but I’ve found that this uninhibited creativity is often where I stumble upon new styles or looks that I haven’t found before.
Now it’s not a photographer and subject performing separate rolls. It’s a collaboration. At this point there’s a new energy that’s being captured.
And much like a hero’s journey we’ve found what we were actually looking for. We jumped into the unknown and we came back with something new.
Throughout the journey both the photographer and the one being photographed were faced with vulnerability and challenged to jump into the unknown.
By facing that challenge through different states of joyfulness, self-love, and connection there was the opportunity for something new to unfold each time.
Satori in the Journey
I’ve found this journey’s pattern throughout various creative works that I’ve undertaken. This vignette of a journey in 3 beats has also given me opportunities to look back on experiences that I have had to see if it fit the same pattern.
But more importantly it’s become more of a conditioned response in my creativity at this point.
As an example in this shoot I didn’t go into it consciously seeking to follow a path of joyfulness, self-love, and connection, but with time it’s subtly adjusted how I go about the creative process, especially when collaborating with others.
My hope is that maybe you’ll find an opportunity within your own creativity that presents you with another opportunity to jump into the unknown and you find something new on the other side of it.
If you are interested in receiving another Satori Stori in your inbox click below