The Creative Process, Uncertainty, and the clempson Taters

September 10, 2014 • 233 Comments

For twenty years I've been stumbling around photography and the creative process and until recently, I've been pretty clueless about the guts of the machine. Last year, I worked on a personal photography project documenting gameday at the University of South Carolina - which resulted in the book, Great to be a Gamecock. Highly influenced by New York City street photographers (whose work is often dependent upon large groups of humans confined in one area) I find it natural then, that I seek out the chaos of a college football tailgate.

"I've never eaten a diaper but that doesn't mean I'm gonna do it."

-Mollie Williamson on visiting Clemson, SC.

As the 2014 college football season approached, I began to feel some pressure in regards to how I was going to follow-up 2013's Great to be a Gamecock. With only two weeks left in August I made a trip with a friend to Table Rock Mountain and it led me to finding coffee in Clemson. When I passed by Tiger Tavern I thought, "What the hell am I doing here?"

And then a giant orange pick-up truck rolled by and it all clicked. Apparently, I was here to discover my destiny - to play a personal prank on my alma mater's arch rival by publishing a book of photography about Clemson fans - from my perspective, a 2001 graduate of the University of South Carolina.

To understand my journey in the creative process, we will need to rewind several years to a time when I had no car and regularly walked to my bartending gig across town. I started putting my camera in my hand and leaving early to make time to make photos along the two mile walk to work each day. When the weather was nice, those walks were the highlight of my day. When it was miserable weather, it might still be the highlight of my day. It allowed me to escape into the little city, to swallow what it had to offer and I'd lose myself in the process. In 2012 I wandered through the horsehoe at USC while ESPN had set-up Gameday coverage of the match-up against Georgia. With that experience in hand, when the first South Carolina game of 2013 rolled around I packed up my camera and began exploring the area outside the Williams-Brice Stadium in the hours and minutes before (and after) kickoff. I told myself that if I could do this for all the home games, then maybe I could make a book.

Long story short, I'm finding that the creative process is nothing more than getting your boots on the ground. I'm not sure where any of this rambling goes, but I know it doesn't go anywhere without overcoming the fears of uncertainty associated with the process. And that most importantly, when you embrace that uncertainty, you do the work you were meant to do. There are no right or wrong answers in this game and it's not multiple choice. And the ability to unknowingly explore one's own path is the true beauty of this process.

There is no map in this game, you just shove off and go. See where it takes you... it might be an exotic locale like Clemson, South Carolina.

Keywords: clempson, columbia sc photographer, columbia sc photography, columbia sc photojournalist, columbia, sc photographer, photographer columbia sc, photojournalism, photojournalist, south carolina photographer

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The Creative Process, Uncertainty, and the clempson Taters

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