Click Happy Summer Academy 2021
Week 3:
Creative Community
The Intent of the Creative Community Week (Heart)
What stirs your heart? What are your soul’s values? Knowing yourself helps you to identify the tribe that you have the most to offer and who has the most to offer you. We can never create meaningful work in a vacuum. We need others to help our best work happen. That might be from mentorship or from being inspired by other artists. It might be from creative playmates. It might be about helping others. It is about building and maintaining relationships with balanced give and take.
Often we get stuck on this one in too much give or too much take. The trick is to learn the balance.
Rule #2 To do your best work you need to help others to do their best work.
Here are some things we will be learning this week.
A note on “Skimming”
I am distilling 30 years of holistic wellbeing research that took me from being a distraught teen to become a happy artist earning my crust from my passions. There are wellbeing gold nuggets hidden here that you will miss if you “skim.” These slide decks also include 12 years of insight as to what it takes to be thriving creative. Sure you can skim read. But then you might miss the good stuff that you need hidden in the corners. Your call…always your call. The more you put into the program the deeper your growth. The more you comment on others work the more good will you build for your own. Now that the dust is hopefully settling a bit see if you can dive a bit deeper and open yourself to a bit more self inquiry push just a tad further out of your comfort zone and see what you find waiting for you on the other side.
Getting Exposed to Manual Settings
Our cameras and phones can operate in purely automatic or you can get back some of the control and shoot instead in manual settings. This workshop will slowly introduce you to manual settings. Here is a link to our poster about it.
Reminder of Adjustable Exposure Elements
Aperture
Shutter speed
ISO
Exposure compensation - Under or over exposing on purpose
Sunsets - you want to deepen the colour of the sunset…underexpose.
Backlit person becoming an unwanted silhouette when you want detail on their face? Overexpose the background to get them back into detail.
This can be done on both a camera and a phone…
Here is how to adjust exposure on your camera.
Here is how to adjust exposure compensation on a cellphone + AE/AF lock
Android
White Belt level challenge this week:
Composition Technique:
Juxtaposition
Using a combination of imagery that makes you think deeper or evokes and emotion.
What is juxtaposition?
Juxtaposition is used to extend or elaborate your ideas.
Visual Examples of Juxtaposition
Mandi Lynn: Skin deep
Juxtaposition in one frame in street photography
Juxtaposition and Humour
Quirky, Intriguing, Entertaining,
Juxtaposition can be used to make you laugh or at least go hmmmmm.
Stephen McMennamy is a master of this form of Juxtaposition.
Yellow Belt Challenge
Creative Self Care: Becoming a HeArtivist
Building your Creative Community and why it is so important
Mandi Lynn
What is a HeArtivist?
You are a HeArtivist if you work to make the world better through their art. It is an active pursuit not passive.
You are connected with your four brains.
You actively work to develop strength and balance in all 4 brains so that your become the most powerful creative you can be.
This week we focus on Heart and our values and connections.
What is the most important ingredient in your life and your creative success?
When I was your age I thought it was to master my craft. To become the BEST in the world at what I do. But now that I am older I know better.
The most important ingredient to your success is your relationships. Yes you need to be gritty and talented but if you don’t know how to treat people you will languish or you will get to the top of your game and you will be lonely as heck. So the key is to do what you can to give a leg up to as many people as possible along the way. Don’t hoard success. Throw it around like bio-glitter. Share your knowledge and bring people along with you. Ask for help.
Stay in a rookie mindset and look for wisdom beyond your own. (Curious rookies bring on average, the wisdom of 5 experts that they have reached out to versus the one expert that experts consult- themselves). This is why curious rookies are a huge asset on a team (so don’t underestimate the power that lies in your not knowing something…you just need to develop the confidence to ask good questions to fill in the gaps. ) So reach up and reach down as you build your creative community. And learn the art of communicating your needs clearly…more on this soon.
Building your Creative Community
Curation isn’t just for gallery walls. You can curate the people you allow access to your energy. The higher the quality of companions. The higher the quality of your own creations I have found. For me that group is the NZIPP Judges and shooters whose work I admire and yourselves.
Who do you surround yourself with? Do they increase your energy levels or decrease them? Do they inspire you or do they dampen your spirits? Do they reinforce your personal values or do they muddy the water for you?
Creators or Consumers?
Throughout my life I have learned that there are two types of behaviours in people. Behaviours that somehow manage to create energy within you…that inspires you…supports you to be more than you thought you could be. Then there is the flip side of that. The consumer - the person that when you are with them you feel like they have latched on your neck somehow and are draining you of energy. That sort of behaviour usually comes from unresolved trauma and learned behaviour. But it exists nonetheless. We aren’t here to judge just to evaluate a person’s impact on us. Sometimes a person can swing from one behaviour to another so your job is to really look at how you feel in the balance of being with them.
Rule of Thumb
Spend more time with Creators than Consumers. The degree with which you do this the happier your life I have found.
The way to surround yourself with more Creators…become one yourself. Make sure that you are lifting others whenever you have a chance. That you have learned to manage yourself in a way that keeps your lid on most of the time and when you are flipping your lid you are wise enough to find solitude to return it to its righful place.
You be come a magnet for the energy you put out into the world.
The important #1 Rule to being a Creator
The balance of Inhalation with Exhalation.
When we create or give to others it is like an exhalation. When we receive or practice self care it is like an inhalation. It is important in relationships and in your creative process to develop this rhythm.
In relationships lopsided giving vs receiving breeds resentment which ultimately becomes cancer to relationships.
In creative practice too much exhalation leads to burnout.
So what is the solution to maintaining balance?
Boundaries
SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO Important. Often so hard because some families and cultures work to remove boundaries from a person. For our mothers or for some grandmothers, culture told her that her value was only in serving the family not in her own creative pursuits. This made it very difficult to learn boundaries. We were taught to be nice and make sure everyone was comfortable. Which is a cool thing to do…when your tank is full enough to support it. But if you are always giving and not taking time to fill your tank…then what you pour out will be similar to the last sip in a soda can (carbonated backwash) something that not many people will want. So create boundaries around your self care time for you and them.
Devices and Boundaries
Just like people some device time can feed your creative soul. Other device time can suck you dry. Dopamine is one of our hormones that helps with our mood regulation. It is the seeking hormone that you need as a curious creative. It sends you looking for the next “high”. Problem is if you are surfing your phone all day it elevates your dopamine levels and then your body trying to seek balance actually block the number of receptors of it in your body…which unfortunately leads to depression and anxiety. We are currently seeing an epidemic of this in wealthy nations like ours. And if you are like many teens this addiction will keep you up at night impacting your sleep. Which then impacts your moods more and makes you less creative.
So it is important to honestly evaluate your device time and its impact on your creativity. What device activities feed your creative soul? Which detract from it?
It is your responsibility only to create your boundaries
The buck stops with you. Even if you are a youth. It is important to have discussions around your boundaries. Understand what your needs are. (the deeper three page journaling method will help you to understand this better) First figure out what is ideal for you. Then problem solve how you are going to find your balance. What boundaries do you need? Use your creativity to establish and come up with playful ways to have these needs met.
For me it is time alone to write. I discovered that I need to get up early and I need to put a do not disturb sign on the door at first. Now people in my family know not to disturb me until a certain time. Clear communication. Clear consequences of what will happen if the boundaries are violated. Then make sure you stick to your word about the consequences. People will test your boundaries to see if you really mean it. If you are wishy washy with them they will keep taking your energy. If you are clear with your boundaries you will find that space and air opens around you and you can gradually increase those boundaries until you have room to play. Then you get to decide who you let in to your playground and for how long.
Values and Boundaries
Boundaries are much easier to maintain when you understand what your values are and when your values are being stepped on.
So this weeks activity is about determining what your values are and then doing an assessment of what activities and people support your values and what activities and people divert you from what your soul values.
We are focused on Heart work this week. What lights up your heart? What makes you Happy, and content, and balanced? Let's go on a hunt.
The Value Game
ANALYSE
Green Belt Level Challenge
Plus -
After you have done your values exercise on the previous slide. Create three images as a Triptych that define your 3 values. Triptych is a term that means 3 images hung together (for examples click the link)
3 images that somehow work together and yet each image represents a separate value.
They need to hang together well as a set. If you are shooting on your cell phone see if you can shoot it as a RAW file so that the image is larger and you can print it large.
They can be any size or format that suits the triptec.
This is conceptual photography so you will need to think about how you can use symbols or objects to represent your words. (brainstorming in your three pages can help)
Important Reminders and Links
All of the important links can be found on this webpage with the exception of your personal Telegram chat page which should be on the email that delivers this content to you.
Online safety - Revisited
How to Critique an Image that helps and doesn’t harm
Remember the rule of thumb.
For every one image you post. You give feedback on 5 images of others.
The better your feedback the better you learn as an artist as well.
Here is the link to the How to Grow Better Artists Through Compassionate Critique document.
It will feel clunky and not “authentic” or weird to give critiques like this, and much simpler to say “it's pretty” but that doesn’t actually help the photographer except to pet their ego. Which is fine but doesn’t improve their game. We are all about rapid feedback loops here. Shoot something. Get real feedback. Then shoot something better. And start again. This is how we grow. But we do it a special way so that we stay confident and curious and not crushed. So read that document and practice. You will feel weird at first but then you will start to improve. Ava Thomas one of the youth mentors has refined the art of giving detailed helpful feedback. See if you can tune into some of her feedback to get an idea of how it can be done. Or listen to how I give it and try and model it.
Summary of Challenges
Copyright Notice
All Click Happy content is collectively owned by Mandi Lynn and Every Body is a Treasure Trust. Please contact Mandi or the trust if you wish to reproduce any of the materials that have been shared with you.
Mental Health Links
If doing any of the suggested activities has stirred up issues that feel too much for your mental health…here are some resources that can help https://themojolution.org/mental-health-help/