Coffee Shop - It's all about connection.

Most of my thinking, reading, learning, and photography, happen in and around coffee shops. Today I was at a coffee shop in Berkeley, CA.

The shop wasn’t another ostentation ground of work cafes around the Bay Area,

with tech folks polluting the place of loud work calls via their smack-dab AirPods maxes.

It was subtle.

What made it special was the laid-back, small-town ambience, and the calm demeanor of the staff.

Hazim served my coffee. He was just a no-bullshit man, with a warm smile straight from the heart. You want coffee, here is an empty cup, and go fill it up. that’s about it.

During my coffee and croissant, I saw many elderly people enjoying their coffee and newspapers in the shop.

One of them accidently fell on the ground and we were able to help him out and get him seated. The lady with him thanked us profusely.

As I was leaving I asked Hazim if I could take a picture of him and he said why not, with a composed smile

It’s the connection I believe, but all these culminated in a feel-good, calm, and something like a post-workout endorphin-kicked vibe throughout the day for me. Yes, It’s always the connection.

Restrict to Liberate : Importance of self-constraints and restricting yourself

On a daily basis, I research on different creative realms, predominantly - photography, street photography, good practices from successful creatives from different domains Over a period of time the innate analytics mind in me try to ponder patterns, and insights from this autodidactic database of creative learning.

One of that insight I’ve came across different realms of creatives is “Restricting yourself to nurture creativity”. There are numerous references of this phenomenon across different realms and by a varied set of creative visionaries.

Restricting yourself could mean many things -

  • Make rules for yourself, where you create a time block where you are not allowed to do anything but create. Neil Gaiman, the best selling author, creator of books, films and short stories, talks about in an interview, about restricting yourself to blocks of time where he created a rule for himself to do absolutely nothing or write, he is not allowed to read a book, watch tv or play games. He has to either do absolutely nothing or write.

  • Shoot using a fixed focal length lens for a prolonged time in the order of months or even years. For photographers out there, this might often be counter intuitive. Especially amateurs, If someone tells a beginner photographer that you have a better shot at being creative if you just use your 24mm prime lens than using that versatile 24-70mm lens, which covers a good range of focal length, he/she wouldn’t be able to fathom any of it.Ralph Gibson the prolific photographer,Guggenheim Fellowship recipient, and acclaimed author of famous photo books have used a 50mm for almost 5 decades. He has published books( such as Quadrats ) with photographs taken with a single focal length of 50mm and pretty much standing within a fixed distance from the subject.

  • Using restrictive tools for the trade: it could mean just shooting on a monochrome camera. For example, acclaimed black and white photographer and founder of the Street Photography International(SPI), Alan Schaller advocates shooting with monochrome cameras and opines that removing the option to shoot in color liberated his creativity. The monochrome series of Leica M cameras the artist uses - do not have an option of color pictures, it liberates your mind of finding or thinking about colors altogether.

  • Make boredom your friend: Seth Godin, the famous American author, talks about a time when he went into a western desert to get bored so that he can produce new work.This helped him eliminate the allure of various distractions. He also famously blogs every single day and talks about how writer’s block doesn’t really exist. Once you are a professional, you need to show up and do the work, even on days when you are feeling bored or not so creative. Make boredom your friend to urge the creativity in you.

  • Remove the allure of perfection: In the modern world we have myriad lots of tools to create. In the case of writing for example, our intuition would suggest writing on word doc or any modern editor would give us the flexibility of superior editing, re-writing and finishing. However writing on a piece of paper, crossing things out , re-writing e.t.c would free ourselves of getting a perfect page but instead opens up the parachutes of creative writing. Additionally there are various studies which corroborate the link between the act of writing and memory and creativity.

Photography : Are you learning constantly ?

You have almost mastered your device, you have the technical know how to take a picture at the right exposure, you know about f-stops , aperture, shutter speed, ISO and exposure triangle. You are familiar with zooms, primes and various different lenses and how they behave. You take good pictures, some of your friends applaud you. But now what ?

How to be a constant learner in photography. I think the way is to read, watch, listen and have hands on everyday on various aspects of photography. Learn photography , it’s history, techniques one at a time. I am in my constant learning journey and want to keep abreast with all techniques and philosophy regarding photography.

Today, I watched a couple of videos on youtube about Steve McCurry, some of the biggest takeaways were :

  • For any aspiring photographer, Steve’s advice is to be prepared to work hard, just as in any other profession.

  • Get familiar with your photography gear, almost on a daily basis.

  • Learn history of photography, a lot can be learnt from this.

  • Learn composition techniques such as Rule of thirds and placing your main subject on the intersection etc but be audacious enough to break the rules.

Coffee shops have been my go to place to sit and do some learning and reading up on photography and also get some hands on. Pictured here is The Coffee Shop in downtown Walnut Creek, CA.