Have you ever worked on a creative project only to have it fall short in the execution stage? Of course, we all do! Well, now we have a formal term and a scientific measurement scale for judging that kind of outcome: creality. Best of all, the creality scale is not relegated to the negative end of the spectrum. It can also measure the uptick when the results exceed our expectations whether by serendipity or other means. For a more detailed exploration of this phenomenon, check out today’s guest post on creality by TJ Goerlitz over at QuinnCreative.
Speaking of creality, rather than judging the success or failure of the attempt, that’s where my photographs have been the past two days as I continue my self imposed week long photography challenge for the second week. I skipped yesterday, but made up for it today. Just because you slip off a creative habit once, doesn’t mean you can’t get back on the horse!
Here is a cat’s eyeview of Wilshire Boulevard,
cat's eye view of Wilshire Boulevard
followed by my attempt to document the street banners for Brit Week during which we will be able to view a copy of the Magna Carta, among other things.
Banner for Brit Week 2011
Can’t decide if the tilt is better in the “tilt-corrected” version here, or as shot in the the second photo. Mind the gap!
Street Banner
How do you deal with creality?
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My thought is that the ‘as shot’ version is better. Looks like you corrected the tilt along the inner edge of the building or along the light-pole. To my eye, that makes the building lean the wrong way. It’s possible that correcting the tilt along the outer edge of the building would result in a more pleasing compromise. More experimentation is needed. The folks at Phase One did a post on correcting the keystone effect (as this tilting problem is called) and concluded that a correction to 80% is better than a 100% correction.
Wow, now there’s some synchronicity for you! Creality sounds a lot like visionism, a new distinction I came across in Molly Gordon’s blog post of last…Sunday? And then I blogged about it myself a few days ago. A friend of Molly’s talked about visionism as being different than perfectionism–the latter is about being overly hard on yourself, but the former sounds just like TJ’s definition of creality.
“Mind the gap” (between the vision and the reality) indeed!
Hi Walt! 80% — is that the Pareto rule in action?
I can see the difference in their examples, but less so here. Maybe this building is not tall enough to really illustrate it eg not enough rows of windows going up? Or I should just look at the outside edge as you suggested.
Part of the problem here may be that it is not a right angle corner on the building and the banner is twisting in the breeze AND I did not stand straight on to either of them anyway!
I also think the original is better, but there was enough “off” about it perhaps because of all the linearity in the subjects — including the text on the banner — that I played with a correction.
My tool is not a sophisticated one, so I can work with degrees of rotation and that’s it. I had to crop the photo quite a bit to get it to stay inside the frame, too.
I have another one with a similar problem that I shot last week, maybe I still have it. I think I abandoned it because of an element in the background …. hmmm. Look for it in another challenge day post if I do have it, because otherwise I rather liked the thing.
@Michelle — visionism. creality. perfectionism. so many words!!! Thanks for the tip! I have to check out that post of yours for sure!!
Several people writing about the same thing happens all the time. It’s more than synchronicity, it’s a known neurological occurrence. When we begin to concentrate on something, we are more attuned to the same concept expressed in different ways and notice it more. When I wrote for an advertising agency, I’d often see waves of the same words or concepts appearing in simultaneous ads.
Meanwhile, on my blog, several people tell me that Creality doesn’t happen to them. They don’t visualize an ending, they work solely on concept, developing as they go. Interesting, huh?