What Did You Get For The Holidays to Grow Creatively?

The holiday season is ending and we’re all hopefully filled with a bunch of food, a bunch of time with loved ones, and maybe a bunch of gifts. For me, this upcoming year is all about growing as a creative mind and photographer while I continue my journey in Albuquerque. So I’d like to share with you want I got for this holiday season to help grow creatively, and ask that you do the same in the comment section below.

GoPro Hero3 Black Edition
This was my big gift. I really didn’t expect to get something so elaborate, but certainly grateful that I did. If you don’t know what a GoPro is at this point, you might want to check to make sure you’re not living under a rock. Incase you are, they’re incredibly versatile camcorders that are able to capture HD video in an incredible small and light package. They have been made famous by Redbull, as they use them to mount them to bikes, surfboards, snowboarder’s helmets and about every other place imaginable.

I intend to use this to expand my horizons to more video work. I’d love to be able to do some timelapse work with ease, and really show off all the beauty of New Mexico. This small camera will also allow me to shoot more behind the scenes videos, which will clue you in further on my work process and technique when it comes to photography. Right now, its just me pushing a bunch of buttons and figuring it out as I go, but I hope to be able to use it to produce something truly great in this coming year.

Glide Gear Syl-3000 Steadicam
If you know what this is, then you probably can see where my priorities are for this coming year. For those who don’t know, this is a simple camera stabilizer, used for video work. As I mentioned above, I really want to make more behind the scenes videos for my shoots, to be able to show other photographers, as well as clients, how my photo shoots usually go. This piece of gear allows me to hold a dSLR steady so that I’m able to produce videos without much shake.

Flight Back to Michigan
Sometimes the greatest gifts are the ones with no physical attribute, and ones you purchase yourself. Being that I live in Albuquerque, NM but originally from Kalamazoo, MI; I still have a lot of friends and family in Michigan that I wanted to see for the holidays. And sure, the familiar streets and faces are great and warming, but there was much more to my goal for this trip, and that is centering myself, creatively.

As Jonah Lehrer, author of the NY Time Best seller book “Imagine: How Creativity Works” explains —

“We travel because we need to, because distance and difference are the secret tonic of creativity. When we get home, home is still the same. But something in our mind has been changed, and that changes everything.”This was big for me, and is a big inspiration for this coming year on helping my work grow and expand to new heights. I want to travel at every opportunity. I don’t want my life to be simple and easy, I want struggle. And sure, Kalamazoo has been my home for my entire life up until moving to Albuquerque in June, but I came back with a different state of who I am. I want to continue that growth and change, and use it to come up with bodies of work that I wouldn’t even be able to fathom right now.

So, my holidays have been exceptional for me, purely for the joy of being able to spend it with people I love.  I hope they were for you as well, and I’m interested in making this interactive, and I hope that you’re all looking to expand your creativity this coming year as well. So what have you gotten to do that?