TEN is an ongoing serial effort to highlight points of value within a topic without watering anything down or writing a full blown novel. Obviously there are more factors involved with some decisions and less with others. But in a nutshell creatives in general and the world on whole have a tendency to make processes more involved than they need to be.

The previous TEN post was on saying no and the power it holds. This time around I’m highlighting a number of issues that affect every photographer at some point in workflow though aren’t all that well known. Be it a lack of manufacturer presentation, spotty resources or simply oversight on the user end I’ve come across these issues numerous times and still hear the same questions almost regularly.

1: computer investments should put processor power ahead of RAM – most systems, including mac, don’t allow you to swap processors later but you can always replace and upgrade RAM.

2: lightroom catalogs max out at around 40,000 images. this number is from an adobe tech and i have also heard 25,000 as a limit though have well over that in more than one catalog. the future number, according to beta rumors, is one million.

3: lightroom is not (yet) a network based application – meaning your catalogs can’t be on an external drive. the images themselves can be but none of this works on a network across several computers.

4: retrospect works only with external drives that are directly connected to the computer you’d like to backup/copy/duplicate. again, no network love here.

5: mac pros, at least the newest ones, take PCI E for express cards – don’t be fooled.

6: even the new firewire 800 drobos don’t cut it as main drive material – they are for secondary storage or archiving only.

7: the latest iphone incarnation is dialed in with reqall reportedly – will be testing this soon.

8: since Western Digital makes drives themselves, not just shells like LaCie and others, they tend to use higher end units in their own systems and sell lower end units to the other companies to put in their snazzy shells. they also make a new green power series of drives. interesting spin for the my book series.

9: mobile me will take some tweaking to get in order, especially if you have multiple machines to sync.

10: the latest update to heathkorvola.com is iphone compatible – enjoy.

so it’s been an entire year now since i started putting ideas on location photography down here. and a great year it was. looking forward to a plethora of changes in this next year as i have a few ideas on hand and a brand new outlook. there’s a few reasons for this – partly due to imagination, part to the new business outlook for the industry and part to creativity.

the imagination idea was one of my early posts and among other things i mentioned the guy that grabbed balloons, tied them to a lawn chair and took off from bend, or. didn’t make it far. coincidently, he’s back this past week never giving up his idea and riding his homemade contraption all the way to idaho. that’s evolving imagination.

business wise, we all know that the industry is changing. the question is where it’s going. among all the guesses there are a few that ring more true, or at least more interesting, than others – one of those is this recent take by former NY Times staffer Vincent LaForet via sportsshooter.

lastly, creativity is everything… or nothing. when you have it and your in the flow there’s nothing better. when you don’t, it feels like you’re ready to join the dark side. i’m always thinking of how ideas originate, how the concepts that shape our world take hold and evolve. i ask other creatives whenever i have the chance where they derive their inspiration. the answers vary but what i’ve gleened is that the methods and consistency are similar. whatever it is you’re chasing take notes, always be fresh, keep the numbers high and never give up.

during a recent two weeks in oregon i came across an interesting article in the june issue of scientific american mind on creativity. not what you might expect from this journal but a good read nonetheless (other stories included chronic itching: causes & cures and bisexual species: unorthodox sex in the animal kingdom among others). how to unleash your creativity is a roundtable interview with three very different ‘experts’. the most recognizable is julia cameron author of the artist’s way. the other two are professors and all three are fascinated with the mechanics of creativity.

among the highlights is the idea of getting your ideas out – all of them. whether it’s by writing, as cameron advocates, or email, text, rss or something like jott or reqall yo’uve got to get the numbers up there. then follow through with the images to match. there is inherently no guarantee what works but your ratio of successful ideas, and thus successful images, goes up with the increasing numbers. the mag quotes:

“creative people are productive. they may have lots of ideas that don’t work, but the point is that they have lots of ideas. so if people want to be more creative – and to be effective problem solvers – they’re going to have to be disciplined…”

i would even take that a step further as i disagree that creative people, “may have lots of ideas that don’t work”. they definitely have a vast pool of ideas that don’t work. the key is to fight through those to the winners. einstein is quoted as saying something to the effect of it’s not that i’m so smart, it’s that i’m so stubborn.

in a basic sense the panel breaks down the process into four categories. not really the process of creativity but rather how to maintain creative prowess. those four ideas – capturing, challenging, broadening & surrounding – fit photography to a tee.

so follow your ideas and expand the creativity by getting it down on paper, pushing forward, keeping it new and never stopping. and if you’re up for the test, robert epstein from ucsd has on your creativity score here.