We were lucky to catch up with Bobby Flores recently and have shared our conversation below.
Bobby, appreciate you making time for us and sharing your wisdom with the community. So many of us go through similar pain points throughout our journeys and so hearing about how others overcame obstacles can be helpful. One of those struggles is keeping creativity alive despite all the stresses, challenges and problems we might be dealing with. How do you keep your creativity alive?
This is a question I still ask myself quite often. I believe that the real answer to this sort of issue lies only within the individual asking the question for themselves. What works for me may not work for the next person or the next, and so on.
While I don’t have a definitive answer for this, I do have a few general guidelines that worked for me as I took time to step back from always feeling like I had to create something every day in 2023. Moving forward in 2024, I feel more confident in these practices, and I look forward to developing this philosophy further as my career progresses.
1. Give Yourself a Break
In previous years, I felt the need to create every single day, even when I didn’t feel like it. For a while, this approach was tremendously helpful. It built discipline, refined my mechanical skills, and helped me understand what I was doing and how to achieve the desired end result. This practice allowed me to see an idea through to completion, even if I lost passion for it halfway through.
However, as my artistic style matured, I realized I was experiencing burnout. I was afraid to take a break or ease off, fearing that my creative eye would atrophy with extended breaks. Eventually, I hit a wall of creative exhaustion and was forced to take a break due to a lack of direction. During this extended break (about 6 months), I diverted my attention to other hobbies and efforts. I didn’t think about my art often, but as the months passed, ideas started to form regarding what I wanted to do next, how to approach them, the message I wanted to convey, and how the end result should look.
When the six months were up, and I felt renewed, refreshed, and ready to apply myself to these new ideas, I returned with a renewed passion for my craft. Since then, I’ve found peace in embracing “Creative Seasons” in my life, where I create for a month or two at a time, with several months of breaks in between. While my output in terms of volume may be lower, the work I produce is more satisfying and of higher quality. This deliberate approach leaves me feeling satisfied more often than not, instead of dealing with the anxiety and pressure that comes with producing something every day.
2: Look for Inspiration in Art that is not of Your Own Medium.
A large part of my inspiration when it comes to my photography is driven by other mediums of art that I could never hope or dream to create myself. I draw a lot of my outside inspiration from music I listen to, whether it be a certain genre I adore or a particular album that helps set the tone for a shoot I’m conducting that day or an editing session I’m about to commit myself to in my office that evening. Movies and paintings are also huge inspirations for me. Different methods of lighting, effects, textures, and mediums of creation all feed into me and present a challenge to recreate what I’m seeing and feeling in my own medium of art. I believe that whenever we, as artists, diversify our education beyond the walls of our mediums of expression, we can easily find new inspiration to apply to our own projects.
3: Accept That Failure is Part of the Process
I cannot count the number of times I have failed with an idea I wanted to create. Time and time again, I strive to achieve a certain desired end result, but for some reason, I never quite attain what I was ‘exactly’ looking for. Probably because I’m a perfectionist, and even if I did achieve that desired end result, I’m not quite sure I’d be satisfied even then. For me, it’s like a carrot on a stick that I’m always chasing after. I’ll never get there, and I think I’m completely okay with that. Because what I end up with is still always better than if I had aimed my hopes a little lower or made my ambitions a little smaller.
I will continue to encounter failure with 90% of my creative ideas that come to me in the following year, and that’s okay. It’s all a part of the process. Failure shouldn’t be seen as a negative thing; it should be seen as a welcomed essential part of developing as an artist. Each time you fail, you learn something, and if you don’t learn something after you try to execute your ideas, you’re not developing as an artist. In my eyes, that is truly where you fail.
Let’s take a small detour – maybe you can share a bit about yourself before we dive back into some of the other questions we had for you?
My name is Bobby Flores. I’m 28 years old, and I currently reside in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
I started photography in the latter half of 2020 and haven’t looked back since. Photography, for me, is an obsession I’ve had the privilege to eat, sleep, and breathe since getting swept up in it several years ago. I started an Instagram page early on in my career where you can find me currently @vibethenoun. What started out as a simple place to share my art has developed into something much larger than I could ever have imagined.
Within the last 6 months, I’ve been lucky enough to upstart and manage my own photography business called VTN Photo. I’ve learned more about photography and business management than I ever thought I would need to know. With each challenge presented to me, however, I’ve been able to not only grow as a photographer but as a person, and that is something I’ll never have the words to describe how thankful I am for. You can always find my portfolio and services offered via my website at www.vtnphoto.com.
If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?
For me, I like to think I’m still just getting started. Early on, when I began creating the art that I do, I put a lot of pressure on myself to burn the candle at both ends. Nowadays, I slowly but steadily chip away at my goals day by day. I’ve learned three big lessons along the way to help me get to this methodology.
1: Consistency
It doesn’t matter whether it’s one step or a whole marathon sprint at a time. What truly matters is sticking with whatever your goals are day by day. Some days, that might not mean you’re even doing what you’ve set out to do physically. It might mean that you’re thinking about that activity, having a conversation with a friend about it, reading a book on it, watching a video series, or a documentary surrounding it. Whatever it is that you do to keep your mind even somewhat remotely focused on that goal, then you’re consistently sticking with it in some sort of fashion instead of letting that goal float away and evaporate. To me, it doesn’t matter how far away from the path you stray, as long as you consistently make an effort to get back on the horse, so to speak, when it is time to do so.
2: Learn from Everyone You Meet
There is always something you can learn from people. Ideally, you’d want to surround yourself with people who are positive for you and are wholeheartedly better at what you do than yourself. In a lot of cases, this isn’t always as easy as it sounds. I encourage anyone with a goal, especially a creative one, to aim to surround oneself with peers who will help challenge them and develop a shared goal. This will help push yourself and your boundaries further than if you were to strike it out on your own. Having individuals who share your passion or goals helps to keep that goal alive not just in your mind but, most importantly, in your heart.
Dually, if you cannot surround yourself with such positive figures, learn from the mistakes and follies of individuals who have all the potential in the world but squander and waste their time. Look at what they do and who they surround themselves with to get a feel for what not to do if their lifestyle or accumulated mistakes are something you are not a fan of. For me, this has been one of the largest pillars of my development as a creative professional.
3: Kill Your Ego
One of my personal flaws is that, at times, I know I can let my ego get in the way of how I do things. This has gotten better with age. As my stubbornness and pride have mellowed, so too has my insecurity of asking for help or looking foolish when asking what might be taken as a dumb question when figuring out how to do something.
One of the best things you can do for yourself as a creative is to leave your ego at the door when you are creating something, selling something, or marketing something. There will always be someone just around the corner who will be better at something than you, and letting yourself think even for a moment that you are “the best” or “good enough” at something is the moment you let off the gas and cease developing as an artist. Be confident in what you do, but do not be arrogant. Be ambitious with what you do, but don’t think you will be the next Andy Warhol overnight. Be humble with what you do, but do not sell yourself short. This balanced mentality of always furthering your pursuit of personal development is what will keep you pushing the envelope as a creative and always looking for new horizons.
How can folks who want to work with you connect?
For the early 2024 season, I am giving myself time to take a break from professional gigs and sink my teeth back into personal passion projects that have been stuck in my head for the last few months. I enjoy working with a large variety of groups or people, but my favorite kind of people to collaborate with are other artists.
One of my goals for the year 2024 is to dedicate more time to collaborating with other artists, models, and creatives through my photography, specifically in the conceptual portrait photography realm. These kinds of collaborations always leave me feeling lighter and happier with what I create than other genres of photography, so I’d like to explore that further this year.
You can always find me via my website at www.vtnphoto.com, or you can give me a shout via a personal message on my Instagram @vibethenoun.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.vtnphoto.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/vibethenoun/
Image Credits
Bobby Flores
