Leaping the Great Firewall

People engage their creativity for many reasons. At this year’s True/False film festival in Columbia, Missouri, I was very impressed by two films documenting the courage of two Chinese bloggers and an artist who use their creativity to challenge the censorship of the Chinese government.

Zola is a Chinese citizen blogger. Image from Information.dk

The first was a secret screening so I won’t reveal the name of the film. It focuses on Zhou Shuguang who blogs as Zola and Zhang Shihe who blogs as Tiger Temple. Zhou is from Hunan province and since 2004 has been writing a blog documenting sensitive issues in China, including freedom of speech and government censorship of the media. Beijing based Zhang is a former marketing executive who traverses China on a bicycle to highlight those who have been left behind by the growing market economy and ignored by the Chinese government. Both bloggers risk their life daily trying to bring transparency to a closed society.

Tiger Temple traverses China by bicycle to document injustice. Image from his blog.

BBC image of Ai WeiWei at his Sunflower Seed exhibit at the Tate.

Alison Klayman’s Ai WeiWei: Never Sorry documents one of China’s more famous and controversial international artists. 

Ai WeiWei collaborated on the design of the Beijing National Stadium and is recognized by the art community worldwide for creating conceptual art by altering readymade objects. As a political activist, he has been openly critical of government corruption and cover ups including the scandal following the collapse of poorly constructed schools in the 2008 Sichuan earthquake.


Ai WeiWei’s international fame has provided a broad international audience for his ideas, but it did not protect him from an April 2011 arrest by the Chinese authorities. Released after 2 months of being held without charges, he was accused of tax evasion. His legal battles with the Chinese government are not over and it will be interesting to see how Klayman’s film is received in China.


While I blog about creativity weekly, the greatest potential impact to me and most of my audience is a gain or loss of readership or market share. It is inspiring to learn about those willing to put their lives on the line for journalistic and artistic freedom.

What motivates your creativity?

Director Allison Klayman (center) and friends. Tweeted from the True/False Film Festival in Columbia, Missouri.

Good Enough or Great Enough?

When I meet creative professionals, particularly those who have declining revenues, I often hear about the declining tastes of the American consumer. The premise is that consumers no longer care about “professional quality” and are content with “good enough.”  Interestingly, at the same conferences, I usually meet other artists who are passionate about their unique creative vision and excited about the success they are experiencing.

I do not believe that the digital age has diminished the quality expectations of the general public. Instead, DSLR cameras, desktop design tools, desktop video editing and a plethora of design blogs have increased the quality of the work that people can do for themselves. As their own capabilities have increased, so have their quality expectations on those occasions when they choose to hire a professional.

Your audience is not looking for “good enough.”  They are looking for a difference between what they can produce and what you provide that is “great enough” to justify the price. 

David and Whitney Scott have a creative vision that can transform their morning coffee into a work of art!

50 Great Creativity Blogs

I often write about the importance of staying informed to inspire your creativity. This week I have added a widget to display my favorite photography, printing and design blogs. If you don’t want to set up your own RSS reader, you can simply come here frequently to link to some of the best content on the web.

The blog listing is located on the right side of The Creativity Paradox below the blog archive. Each blog and the most recent headline are displayed with the most recently updated at the top.

If you enjoy reading blogs, you might also be interested in:

The Blogsphere and Twitterverse 

Flipboard Fanatic 

5 Reasons You Should Be on Pinterest

If you are involved in any image or graphic centric field, you need to be on Pinterest.  Pinterest is a rapidly growing social network where people “pin” their favorite images to virtual boards to share with their friends. When people see an image they particularly like, they can “repin” it to one of their own Pinterest boards. Here are five reasons why you need to join:

1. Entertainment - If you enjoy art, photography or design, what could be more fun or refreshing than spending a few minutes each day looking at the images selected by your friends?

2. Community - Like any social network, Pinterest is a way to find and interact with people who share a common interest in a particular type of imagery. Online interactions strengthen real world connections and often lead to new real world connections.

3. Discovery - New trends in design and photography will be visible on Pinterest long before they are reported in the mainstream press. If you make a point to follow the trendsetters in your field, you will be able to see the evolution in their artistic sensibilities as it happens.

4. Exhibition - The items that you choose to post and repin demonstrate your tastes and skills to your followers. Over time, you will gather a collection of followers who appreciate your unique point of view.

5. Optimization - When you pin images from your own website or blog to a Pinterest board, the image links back to your own site. Those links and the links from every repin will lead people to your site and improve your search engine results.

Your strategy on Pinterest should be, to quote Seth Godin, to be interested and interesting. No different than any other social interaction.

Here is a link to my boards on Pinterest. As you will see, my interests include portraits, places, paintings and photo book ideas.

Hansol Kim is someone I enjoy following on Pinterest.

What are your thoughts on Pinterest?

3 Marketing Mistakes Photographers Make

Eastman Camera by The Javalina on Flickr

Next week the Wedding and Portrait Photographers Association will be holding their 2012 conference and trade show at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas. Each WPPI event draws thousands of professional photographers looking for ways to improve their photography skills and their business skills. Most of them are making the following three mistakes on their web sites which limit their search engine results and their web traffic.

1.  Building the site in Flash - Adobe Flash is a powerful tool and the websites that utilize it are dazzling for those who visit the sites from full sized computers. But the world is going mobile with 7% of all web traffic coming from smart phones and iPads. Most of those devices are not able to view your website.  

2. Blocking image copying - Many photographers block the ability to right click an image or copy an image which protects their copyrighted work from misuse. By doing so, you also prevent your fans from sharing your work and spreading the news about your talent. If you were to watermark low resolution images and allow people to link to them, your work could be shared on Pinterest, Facebook and other sites where potential clients would see your images and studio name. Those links bring people to your website and improve your search engine rankings.

3.  Image only sites - Many photography sites feature images so strongly that they neglect any captions or text explanations. People love stories and a short caption can put an image into context and give it more meaning. It also helps the search engines know how to classify the images. When you are adding an image to your site, consider adding a caption and be certain to name the image and include your copyright information in the alt text field that the search engines read.

Are you making any of these mistakes on your site?

The Price of Canvas

The Card Players by Paul Cézanne

The most expensive painting ever sold is Paul Cézanne’s The Card Players which was purchased in 2011 for over $250 million by the royal family of Qatar. This masterpiece of French Post Impressionism, finished in 1893, measures approximately 38 x 51 inches. What were they thinking?

A new canvas of approximately the same size can be purchased from Dickblick.com for $251.10. For an additional $82.13 you can order a master oil paint set with 8 colors, a painting knife, three brushes and an instructional DVD. With the canvas, the paint and couple of passes through the DVD, could’t they have created their own painting of two card players?

The difference is the art! The original painting was made by the hand of a creative genius who saw the world in an exciting new way. It was painted after decades of devotion to painting which started with drawing classes, was strongly influenced by the Impressionists and evolved into something completely new. 

Portraits by Natalie Licini

The difference is the art! That difference is important today when couples and families decide how to capture and preserve the memories of their senior year, their wedding and other important milestones. Most of us know a friend who owns a professional style camera and takes pretty good pictures. If they take some pictures and burn them to a DVD, we could use the kiosk at Walmart to order a photo book.

Albums by Black River Imaging

The difference is the art!  A handmade leather album crafted from portraits captured by a talented professional photographer reflects the years of devotion that the photographer dedicated to learning the art of photography. The portraits reflect the attention to detail required to capture the beauty of the event. The pages reflect the care the artist dedicated to selecting, cropping and retouching the images during the album design. The final album shows the loving care of the photographer and the craftsman who assembled and bound it all together.

Like any fine art, the value of portraits will increase with the passing of the years. Sharing memories with your friends, your children, and eventually your grandchildren, makes them grow richer each passing year.

Invite your friend with a camera to preserve the memories of your next birthday party. Hopefully you will have many more. Use a real professional photographer for those once-in-a lifetime events.

Aren’t your memories worth it?

Portraits by Dawn Shields

Small is Happy!

Most of the time, we are told to dream big. Set big, bold goals and work hard to achieve them. This is generally good advice.

However, when it comes to being happy, smaller joys may be better. Recent psychological research by Ed Diener reported in the Harvard Business Review finds that the frequency of positive experiences are a better predictor of happiness than the intensity of positive experience. How good your experiences are doesn't matter as much as the number of good experiences you have.

As you pass through each day, a dozen mildly pleasant events will contribute more to happiness than one amazing event. Don't sacrifice all the little joy's of life to reach the big goals. The little joys are what makes life truly happy!

What small joys have you experienced this week?