Think Inside The Box
How identifying, analyzing and working with your contraints make you a better creative.
Notes from the Lab is a newsletter that delves deep into the creative process, rituals, and thought process behind being a photographer and filmmaker.
This project is a journal of my projects and experiments. A logbook of everything I learn, a record of inspirations and takeaways from my journey as a parent and artist. I want to relentlessly share my creative and technical progress — because gatekeeping sucks. It’s published (almost-) weekly.
Occasionally, it’s also a good old photo blog and a weekly log of mundane things.
A big breakthrough for me - as a creative and a father - came when I figured out how to accept and use constraints as a driving force in my daily work and life.
When our son came into our life and we moved to a slightly smaller city, there was a shift in how we had to organize our lives as parents and photographers. Suddenly, but not unexpectedly, we had to say farewell to time as a supposedly endless resource. A resource that has often been wasted in the illusion of immortality before becoming parents anyway.
Moving to a smaller city meant a lot more physical space for us as a family, more green and a tighter community - but at the same time, fewer immediate resources at our hands and maybe fewer choices regarding cultural activities and buzzing life on the street. And I had to admit to myself that, to function correctly, I didn’t need nor want the big city life. I realized that too many choices had the effect of draining my energy more than invigorating me.
This life choice was the best compromise between staying inspired, getting enough rest, introspection, and proper quality time with the family, and not getting bombarded with everything all at once while still having the ability to choose when I need the input or the resources for a project.
Long story short, becoming a dad and moving to a city that suits my personality made me realize myself and my personality and subsequently understand my needs better, which opened up the beginning of a process to understand my work as a creative. Regardless of these seemingly limiting factors, fewer outside resources, and different time management, I found myself in a position where my work, especially personal projects, suddenly felt more aligned with my personality than ever before.
Or, to be precise, I worry a lot less about the extrinsic measures of my work, and consequently, I feel a lot more freedom to look closely at my intrinsic motivation to do the work that interests me. As a result, I learned that working under restrained conditions frees up my mental capacity to look inside and see what’s genuinely my own.
Self-proclaimed productivity and creativity gurus hammered the mantra of THINK OUTSIDE THE BOX into our brains for ages, and yet, for millions of us, these boxes are very real. Almost everything in our lives is a box: the time at our disposal, our age, where we live, how we earn our money, our relationships, they’re all boxes. But they are not all bad.
By recognizing this simple truth, I learned that constraints can be a powerful tool to make you begin something because too many choices can stop you from getting started. Constraints provide focus by limiting your options.
Work with what you have in front of you and commit to it.
There are countless examples of using constraints as a photographer. One great example is the commitment in portraiture to one specific person and exploring the myriad ways to express the relationship between photographer and sitter. Deep diving into this special relationship, exploring boundaries, coming up with new ideas together, and collaborating by using two unique perspectives.
Whether it’s your spouse, your kids, friends of friends, or your neighbor, you can even go as far as Charlie Engman, who has been working with his mom for the last ten years and seemingly never running out of ideas in a quirky, amusing, and pleasantly strange way. Or photographer Christopher Anderson, who turned his camera towards his family in a very personal manner after deciding to quit working as a war photographer. Or Marton Perlaki, collaborating with his friend Elemér in a true form of artistic expression.
The possibilities are endless if you can accept your box and deliberately look inward to recognize what truly counts for you.
— Ramon
01 — HOUSEKEEPING
Notes from the Lab on Instagram
Alongside my personal Instagram account, which features mostly my commercial work, I decided to create a second one as a companion to this newsletter, featuring sketches, experiments, and fragments of upcoming and archival projects. A virtual extension of the stuff I’m writing about.
Follow the Lab here: @ramonhaindl_lab
This was really interesting for me as I suddenly have the problem in reverse! I recently retired from the design profession, and now my tightest fitting box - time management - is gone! I have so many projects and so much learning I want to do for myself and without my usual constraints I’m floundering a bit. While I want to relish the freedom from responsibility I now have, I’m think I’m going to have to start scheduling, or at least prioritizing. Using your points here as reference, I think I will focus on what speaks to me most loudly from my list... those things are probably most intrinsic to my personality. ✌️