Which tells the right story? — The Creativity Guide

So many of our ideas about creative work are wrong. They’re based on German Romantic mythology and winking popular culture. Creation happens like this: a tortured genius, usually with crazy hair, has a lightning bolt of inspiration, runs to the studio or desk, and works feverishly, and - voila! - a masterpiece! I’ve certainly never experienced any thing like that. Although, believe me; I really really would like to just once. It sounds like fun.

For me, the hardest struggle is to simply get to the desk.

And then stay there. (And stay the heck away from the internet, too. I mean those cat videos aren’t going to watch themselves! Sigh.)

It’s not that I don’t believe in inspiration. I do. Deeply.

But, in my experience, it’s usually something quieter: An intuition. A hunch. Or often a slow apprehension, saying: This. Pay attention to this. Be curious here. Besides the essential learning of craft and tools, the most important thing a maker has to learn is listening to this nudge, to not let it get overwhelmed by the noise of the world or shame and doubt. It can slip away so easily and noiselessly, never to return.

Once it’s heard, though, the real work begins. It’s detective work mostly, trying to figure something out after the fact. An example: Taking a picture. I’m looking . . . and something triggers a response. Click goes the shutter. Image captured. Later, editing the image, or selecting which image of several best tells the story of that response, I discover the details of what it was I sensed in that one fleeting moment. It’s the moment where I find out if I actually saw what I imagined I was seeing.

All kinds of surprises await here.

The surprises lie in the details. Details make meaning. Details tell the story. (They do! Ask a forensic investigator.) And this is true in all creative forms. This is also where it gets complicated. Hard questions arise. Do the details reveal or obscure the story? Do the details distract from the story? Do the details tell the story you want to tell? Or, this maddening question: do the details suggest a different story, the story you didn’t know you should be telling? (This happens more often than you’d think. I’m deep in the third draft of a book with a client who’s been very brave and realized that the details she’s working with point in quite a different direction from where she started with a substantial change in format as a result.) If creators have crazy hair, this is the time when it happens. It’s the time when they starting pulling their hair out.

That’s the work of making.

Photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson spoke of “the decisive moment.” His idea suggested that there was one singular instant when all the elements of an image - all of the details of making an image - harmonized almost supernaturally, so perfectly did they tell the one story of that one moment. Later in his life, though, he backed away from that phrase. He remarked, “Mon ami, there is the moment and there is eternity and that is all.”

His thinking shifted, I suspect, because he knew a story can be told in such vastly different ways. Consequently, he knew that different meanings could be drawn from those tellings. If there ever is a “right” way to tell a story, it means telling a story in the way only you can tell it. It means choosing the details that speak to you, for those choices become your expression.

So, I’m sharing three different images of a story I happened upon while poking around a church in Milan. They’re similar and they’re not. I think one captures the story more accurately, even though I like all three. I’ll describe a few of the details I notice and like in each image, details which may or may not support the story I happened upon.

Write and tell me which image you believe best tells the story. I’d love to hear from you about the details you noticed and why they spoke to you. And I’d especially love to hear what you think the story actually is.

Click to enlarge image. — *Click to enlarge image*.

The Watchers. Variation One.

I like that this image is not level; it’s off-kilter enough. Since I like strong graphic shapes, I like the shape of the light on the floor, how it breaks up all the browns surrounding it. I like how the diagonals the light makes move and where they draw the eye. I like the spray of red votive candles on the far right side of the image; they add life to a potentially dead space. I quite like the one highlight which falls on the old woman’s very sensible right shoe and picks out the thinness of her legs in the shadows. I like the warmth of the light that colors the nimbus of white hair of the couple. (But are they too close to the center of the frame?) And I like the visual rhyme of the shape of their heads and the shape of the baldachin in the distance. There’s a strip of pale blue between them, but set back a ways and it makes me think their heads are like two clouds floating upon the sky. This all may be more sentimental than I’d prefer.

The Watchers. Variation Two.

I missed this image in my first edits, but, noticed it differently with the passage of time. First, a shout out to my nephew, Dylan, who wandered into the frame from behind the column. Again, I like the strong clean shape the raking light makes on the floor, and, likewise, the scalloped shadow cast by the pew upon it. I like the descending cascade of the arched shapes of the paintings in the background, and how the line this makes intersects with the diagonal line on the floor. I love the silvery- green- yellow color of the light in this descending cascade as well; it’s the color of Paris or willow bark. I like how well the light articulates the couple, how clearly it separates them from the space around them. They’re off-center enough this time. I like that they’re standing; it feels hopeful. Many technical flaws to work with, though. Part of the floor is blown out with no tone. The focus is rather soft. And the image is quite grainy and will be hard to print.

The Watchers. Variation Three.

Overall, the tone is much cooler darker, and quieter, especially without the compositional drama of those big blocks of falling light. Most of the implied lines in the picture are vertical; they’re heavier which lends weight to the image. The strongest line is the diagonal made by the blue light coming from the right side of the image, nearly bisecting it. It lands perfectly on the couple. They’re enough off-center that the eye has to look for them for a second. I like that they appear to be one being almost. I like how sculptural they are, how solid they feel; there’s a sense of the the weight of their lives together, and the weight of their lives watching together in that church, alone and quiet.