I firmly believe that taking intentional time to play and experiment and even mess up is so important for maintaining a creative career that you feel full-filled in!

Stepping away from what you ‘have’ to do or what you ‘should’ be doing to create just for the sake of creating whether anyone will see it/hear it/read it or not is incredibly revitalizing.

It takes the pressure off. Not every work we create needs to be a master piece. In fact, it’s in those times of reckless abandon that we stumble across new ideas, happy accidents and/or entire new career directions.

I challenge you to set time aside to just play

.. write some silly poem
.. paint something wild
.. dance in your living room (try crumping this time..?)
.. photograph something outside your genre .. or yourself on a photo walk!

I try to fit in a play shoot about once a month, whether I get a model and try new lighting and posing or a look I’m not necessarily drawn to or a technique I’d like to learn.

This shoot here was a play date, it was a photowalk where the intention was to look for interesting light — it ended up being over cast that day so we had to switch gears. We found an interesting location and played with movement, depth of field, expression and just shot for the sake of shooting.