Here’s one I wish I had more feed-back on from readers in OPy and the web – I think it’s a fascinating field. © Niall Benvie 2002
People who take part in extreme sports, it has been shown, can get hooked on the “rush” associated with facing danger – driving them on to ever more daring feats to achieve the effect again. Niall Benvie wonders if a similar process drives creativity – or if we are just too eager to analyse mystery.
By modern standards of “normal” behaviour, spending hours or days in a hide on land or in water, waiting for a bird or mammal to appear, is considered somewhat eccentric. It is the sort of revelation that, in most companies, is likely to attract an expression of awe, immediately followed by a puzzled silence. “You must have a lot of patience” is a popular get-out move, to which the right response, in my case at least, is, “No, I’m just stubborn”. It’s not usually worth trying to explain why hide time not only makes sense but why, from our perspective as wildlife photographers, we often feel compelled to do it.
The reasons we take ourselves to these peripheries of “reasonable” behaviour are as numerous as there are those of us willing to do it. Sometimes, they may simply be financial, sometimes the resulting kudos provides a motive. There may be a desire to see and photograph what no other person has ever witnessed or, most commendable of all, a simple desire to honour the subject through photography. But whatever the motivation, the moving force is creativity and in some, the urge to create can be as powerful as any of our other “basic instincts.”
I get a recurring dream of arriving at the end of my life and, instead of all its events flashing before my eyes, I see all the photographs I’ve missed: the time when I framed up the perfect falls, but no salmon leapt; the occasion when an extraordinary double rainbow at dusk had to go in the bin because I failed to focus my rangefinder; the way a seal looked at me from the water just when the autofocus failed.
Creativity has been called the successful resolution of internal conflicts. For some writers, that may apply, but in the context of what we do, it is more about the urge to realise a vision – to show other people what we have seen and the more powerful the urge the more upsetting missing that opportunity becomes. An unexpected off-shoot, in my case at least, is that virtually all my acquisitive instincts for things have reformed over time into a lusty greed to acquire experiences and to make pictures out of them. I envy nobody their possessions but there are many whose experiences I long to share.
Those of us who find it too expensive, or choose, to do most of our work away from the wildlife hotspots of the world can find our diet pretty lean unless we put in a lot of time and work researching sites and waiting (in that hide) to see if anything appears. Pictures come slowly; experiences are hard won. I believe, however (as one with a deeply ingrained Presbyterian sensibility would), that this is the best training possible for when we go to pig out in Yellowstone or Florida. It is easier to appreciate just how spectacular these places are (if over-worked) when you may shoot more rolls of mammals or shorebirds in a week than you do in a year at home. But living on that sort of diet all the time simply demands even more spectacular encounters if the level of creative satisfaction is to be maintained.
Here, I think we can draw parallels with people who take part in extreme sports, such as canyoning, base jumping or skeleton bobsleigh (if sitting face down a few inches off the ice on a tea tray as you hurtle down an ice run isn’t extreme, I don’t know what is). “We have strong evidence that the feelings of being elated and excited because you are moving toward achieving an important goal are biochemically based, though they can be modified through experience”, comments Professor Richard Depue of Cornell University’s Laboratory of the Neurobiology of Personality and Emotion. He believes that differing levels of, or sensitivity to, the neurotransmitter dopamine goes a long way to accounting for the fact some individuals are highly motivated – or “incentive-reward” driven, while others are less focused on particular goals. What drives extreme sports participants and perhaps also those people with a highly developed creative drive is the need to experience the sensation associated with the stimulation of the dopamine system. I know from personal experience that a strong sense of well being descends for a couple of days when I look at new work which I’m happy with; I believe I’m not alone in experiencing this sensation. However, like the base jumper who has to find ever more daring places to jump from if he is to continue to get the intensity of response the first time he faced and overcame his fear, so the difficulty of producing new images which hit the spot becomes ever harder.
A further twist is added by another neurotransmitter, serotonin, often referred to in the context of Seasonal Affective Disorder or “winter blues’. In that disorder, reduced levels or activity of serotonin (stimulated in part by the hypothalamus’s reaction to short days and darkness) can lead to people being more irritable and volatile than usual. At these times, the response to dopamine is heightened. Reviewing my collection, the majority of my favourite pictures have been taken in the winter months. That may be simply because I like the colours and look of winter but it could also be because the effect of these pictures when I first saw them was more powerful than when I shot a satisfying picture the following summer.
How marvellous it is to have labels. Every winter, I used to think that I was just miserable chiel, moping around like one of Joanne Rowling’s dementors between photo shoots. Now I can characterise myself as “serotonally deprived”. The endless pursuit of new images isn’t just because I need to make a living. No, it’s because I am a martyr to my dopamine system. The best treatment is perhaps to go somewhere warm and sunny with lots of approachable mammals. But no, that would offend my Presbyterian instincts too deeply, I think. I’ll just stay at home and try to get off the dopamine. Creativity, after all, is also about finding new solutions to old problems.
Literature on the link between creativity and the dopamine system is hard to find, so if there are any real psychiatrists reading this, I’d be pleased to hear your ideas.
I’ve seen the video three times now and I’ve had the chance to read Oliver James’ books and newspaper articles. He believes that many (but not all) high achievers are afflicted by low self-esteem, stemming from negative childhood experience, and so use success, particularly in terms of status and wealth, as a form a self-medication to offset deep feelings of inadequacy and self-doubt. I would agree. I would also say that once the novelty of achieving something wears off, so levels of serotonin and dopamine plummet, leaving the high achiever feeling empty and depressed until the next “fix” of success arrives. In between such fixes, the achievers may self-medicate using alcohol, drugs, and nicotine to palliate their low mood. The very long working hours and stress levels that accompany high achievement lead to alienation from one’s fundamental psychological needs and increase the risk of substance misuse. In contrast, people with healthy levels of self-esteem do not have something to prove, to either themselves or other people. They do not feel the need to work 100 hours per week in order to live up to the expectations of their high achieving parents or hear self-critical voices telling them that they are a “loser” if they don’t come first.
Aside from that, I think one of the indicators of healthy self-esteem is the ability to enjoy one’s own company. If a person can enjoy their own company on a regular basis and for long periods, then such a person loves themselves (in a healthy, non-narcissistic sense) and so has the ability to love other people. Symptoms of low-self esteem and low serotonin in a person include a dislike of their own company and a rapid and low boredom threshold when others depart from a social encounter. These individuals will tend to use stimulants such as music, mobile phone “conversation”, and substances or alcohol to ensure that they remain alienated from themselves. Stimulus-hungry people are also bored with reality because ultimately they are bored with themselves. They cannot “be” since they are in constant “having” mode. The craving for dopamine and serotonin experienced when sitting in the park or on the beach mirrors the same craving felt in a shopping centre or fast-food outlet, since for most people in my view, both are about consumption. In McDonalds, the temporary rush is from a burger; on a beach, it is from a cigarette or a can of beer or a telephone conversation. The intrinsic value of the world cuts no ice with many people. Ultimately, this leaves people so alienated from themselves that self-love, love for others and love of the intrinsic world is impossible. They become like an onion – peel and peel and peel away the layers and you will never find the kernel.
I should add that in my opinion, the architects of our present world create emptiness and promote dissatisfaction in order to stimulate consumption – miserable people tend to make better consumers. Quick fixes, such as the latest widescreen TV will palliate inner emptiness in someone’s life for a while, until the hidden persuaders decide that the current model is no longer desirable and so must be replaced.
Some questions. Do you think photography can be an article of consumption? And is there any truth to my view that creativity in photography is a possible indicator of someone’s dissatisfaction with the intrinsic value of the world? For example, I’ve spent time on Flickr and I’ve noticed that colourful and arguably attractive, but unrealistic landscape and nature photographs tend to attract more accolades and praise than attractive, but realistic photographs. Is reality not good enough for some people? I have an analogy: I think certain examples of photography/digital art can have a similar effect on people’s attitudes and tastes as pornography – exposure to images of nubile, perfectly-formed women can and does lead men to prefer fantasy to reality and also makes women feel inadequate about their own bodies, because they’re not “perfect” like the actors in porn. Returning to nature and landscape photography, is it true that those who prefer attractive but unrealistic images are in fact projecting their own inadequacies on to the world i.e. they are bored/dissatisfied with themselves, so reality is boring and dissatisfying and so must be jazzed up in Adobe Photoshop? I’m not suggesting that using Photoshop necessarily leads to jazzed-up, unrealistic images. Nonetheless, I’m very interested in the idea that photography and art can sometimes drop clues about how practitioners and consumers view themselves in relation to the world. Since experienced nature photographers are used to seeing and evaluating photographic work of a high standard, is this group at risk from the dangers of boredom and dissatisfaction with how the real world looks? I don’t know if you remember a television commercial about five years ago for a Lexus car, featuring a woman evaluating every detail in her sight and passing comment. The wine glasses in a restaurant – “not crystal” she announced. The Lexus, of course, was so perfect that her pedantry subdued, until she looked out of the car window- “hedge needs a trim”. The hedge looked OK to me!