It was something I read in a magazine not too long ago that inspired this column. The writer was talking about the three levels of creativity: imitative, adaptive, and innovative. I wish I could remember the context, but I made a quick connection to photography. We're imitative at the start; we copy others. Then we're adaptive; we make what we've imitated our own. Then we become inventive; we create out of our judgment and life experience. Those three stages instantly clicked with me (no pun intended). When we start out as photographers, no matter whether we're amateur or pro, I think we spend a period of time being not much more than the sum of our influences. There's nothing wrong with that. In fact, it's encouraged: we're told to study other photographers, see what they're doing, get inspiration from them. But my next thought was this: at what point do we start to move up the ladder? When do we stop imitating and adapting and start creating?
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