We’re almost to the last quarter of 2010–wow, the year has flown by! Now is the time to be thinking seriously about what you want to accomplish next year. I suggest taking a day, grabbing a friend/colleague/partner, and going off-site someplace with a pad of paper or a Moleskin and a pen and brainstorming possible goals for 2011. What do you want to accomplish? What dreams to you want to achieve?
I was in a law school class recently where the professor was talking about the importance of brainstorming. The class? The most practical one you can take: Trial Practice, where one learns how to be a lawyer in the courtroom. The professor, the fabulous Mario Conte, said that the first thing to do with any case is to brainstorm about it with others. The others don’t have to be lawyers–just others with whom you can exchange ideas…pretty much just riff off of each other. This way one can find the best, strongest image goals for the presentation of the case and then you can build on that to success for that case.
Same goes for photographers and any creative biz pro. When you are thinking about your goals for the future, you can get stuck in your own head and in what you think is “reasonable.” Brainstorming with someone else helps drop those walls and frees you to just explore.
The great thing about brainstorming is that nothing is out of bounds–if you think “I want to shoot for Vanity Fair” and you are a lowly second-year photo student, so what? Write it down when you are brainstorming. Anything goes!
Then, later, you can go through the free-form thoughts and pick out the things you really will try to accomplish.
For now, take a day and let yourself dream/imagine with abandon.