“The most successful images I create are those in which I have exactly in my head what I want to produce in the studio,” Aaron Goodman recently told me. A New York-based photo illustrator with 15 years of experience creating amazing, idea-driven images for editorial and commercial clients, Goodman’s work reeks of a photographer who likes to experiment.
“Of course there’s room for learning from experimentation,” he said. “But this learning rarely applies to the shot you were working on.” He explained that meeting tight editorial deadlines and keeping track of the message is like an intricate puzzle. “The image has got to match the headline exactly, not just the story, and so I can’t suddenly change something.”
Given how much photographers tell me about the benefits of experimenting, being playful and learning though accidents, I found Goodman’s point fascinating:
He learns all the time through experimenting and accidents, but the nature of his work forces him to apply this learning the future projects.
I’ve dubbed this process, “Experiment It Forward,” and I think it has implications for all of us on tight deadlines.
All creative people need to experiment, but few of us can experiment extensively within a given project, thanks to the reality of deadlines. This can be frustrating, and sometimes create frustration. What can we do? Experiment It Forward!