What drives creativity? A theory

I've often asked myself what drives me to create, what inspires me.

Over the years, I've developed a theory that there are three main drivers that inspire me to create. 

It is particularly applicable to my experience as a photographer, which is why I am publishing this article on my photography blog, but it can also be true for many other forms of creation.

After thinking about this theory for several years, I realized that it applied to a lot of different artists, and that almost every art piece can be seen through this prism.

We can represent these sources of inspiration in a triangle.

VISION DRIVEN:

A Vision Driven idea came to you from sheer inspiration.

I will not go in to dream interpretation, as I am not a specialist, but it represents an idea that came from within, either in a dream or a burst of inspiration, or after going through a multitude of sources of inspiration and processing the most potent ideas into something personal.

TOOL DRIVEN:

A Tool Driven idea came to you because of a creative tool you use.

Upon using the tool, you envisioned new possibilities that immediately triggered your imagination and were not possible without the tool.

WORLD DRIVEN:

A World Driven idea came to you after observing the world around you.

You noticed something that caught your attention and touched you, and you decided to recreate this emotion through art to attempt to capture or document it.

Note that these are very different directions:

A Vision Driven idea will require the right Tools, but they serve the Vision. The Vision will be executed in the World, but it doesn't have anything to do with something that was perceived outside of the realm of imagination.

A Tool Driven idea will require a Vision, but this vision will serve the technical concept. The World around us will fit in the Tool Driven idea but not be the main part of the concept.

The World Driven idea may or may not even require an inner Vision, and the Tools will be chosen to serve the concept.

Here are a few examples:

The photograph Glass Eyes, by Man Ray, strikes me as coming from a personal Vision.

Even though the technique is flawless, any functioning camera could have captured it, it doesn't illustrate a specific technological advancement or a technique.

It is also staged, I doubt Man Ray saw the scene in the world in front of him exactly like this, and captured it discreetly.

With Infrared Photography, such as this photo from the book The art of color infrared photography, what strikes the viewer before anything else is the technique and Tools used.

As for any photo taken with this technique, the tool takes over the vision or the world that it depicts to be its own language, its own form of expression. 

In the photo Harlem Neighborhood, Harlem, New York by Gordon Parks, the photographer captured the World around him. The scene wasn't staged or based on an idea that he had. The technique only serves the photographer in the way that it allows him to capture it.

The models described so far can also be combined.

At the intersection of each pole, a median creativity driver can be defined.

A Vision + Tool driven idea can come to the artist after realizing that the personal idea contained technical elements that will be important to realize it.

It can also come after the artist discovers a tool that will enable them to recreate a vision they already had and couldn't tell before.

A good example in photography would be Double Exposures. The right tool is necessary to achieve one in the camera, and it can help the artist illustrate a vision. But it is a staged and technical achievement, rather than a capture of the world as it is. Or one could think of a foggy dream, and how a dream sequence could only be achieved with foggy optics.

A Vision + World idea owes its origin in equal parts to the outside world and the imagination of the artist. 

Being inspired by a place, a sound, a light, color (etc) and developing a personal vision that will exist in conjunction with these spaces would be a good example.

A Tool + World driven idea is an idea that combines technical needs to be executed with a source of inspiration from the external world. 

Using a macro lens, a zoom lens, or a fisheye lens, or filters to capture an exciting existing subject, like insect photography or taking pictures of stars, where the technique and the idea have an equal weight in the final result would be a good example. 

I would love for this article to start a discussion about what inspires you. Please let me know as I am always curious to learn about other people's creative processes.