The Creative Process: Thoughts Take Form
An extracted chapter from an extensive essay about the non-technical aspect of my creative process.
The moment the shutter is opened is sacred. I bring to the act of photography all the pictures I have seen, the books I have read, the music I have heard, the people I have loved, as Ansel Adams once so famously and beautifully quoted. It could be said, therefore, that within every frame is everything that is and ever has been. We are, after all, beyond all our surface appearances, inherited ideas, beliefs, thoughts, and identities, made up of the same thing.
‘‘You don’t make a photograph just with a camera. You bring to the act of photography all the pictures you have seen, the books you have read, the music you have heard, the people you have loved.’’
- Ansel Adams
I also bring to the act of photography many of my current life woes; my stresses, struggles, emotional difficulties, my pain, my sadness, my grief, my trials and tribulations. The creative process is cathartic; an alchemical process in which I take my darkness and transmute it into light. I want every photograph I create to be a reminder of the beauty that can be born from something ugly and painful.
My partner, Darcia, enlightened me last year when, at my artist’s talk about my Finding Light exhibition at Plas Glyn-y-Weddw, she told me about the grief she sensed in the photographs on display. It is not by accident that I have gravitated towards the natural world in my most desperate moments on earth. Many artists throughout history have done so, too.
There is something so beautifully sacred about the space that Mother Nature creates for our unfolding; she allows those deeper, often unmet parts of ourselves to surface and be kissed by the soft morning light. We leave the landscape mirroring the same love and acceptance she models for us.
During my moments of creating, I very much get that sense: that I am not myself, but I am everything. I lose my mind for a while as I completely immerse myself in the process. Thoughts cease, and I, to a certain degree, no longer exist. I feel the gentle breeze caressing my skin; I plant my feet firmly in the soil; I hear the faint whispers of God in the branches of the trees; I engage my mind, my body, and my spirit in this one, simple activity. I can be, therefore, nowhere else but here. In this place. In this very moment. With this very subject. My soul returns home and reconnects with the soul of Nature. The act of making the photograph is absolutely transcendental.
I sat for a while one February morning, determined to write this essay on the creative process after scoffing my apple juice porridge and raspberries, and struggling to find much motivation to write my purposeless scribings of ‘morning pages’ in my journal, as has been my routine sometimes over the past few years. I have been struggling recently with a severe sense of disconnection from the transcendental creative place described above. Life has become busy with work and responsibilities; a business doesn’t build itself, after all, and, at this point in my life, three years into my wonderful relationship with Darcia, building the business that will provide for me, her, and my future family has become my priority.
I have been feeling completely uninspired by the landscape that surrounds me; I have come back home to Welshpool—from where I have tried leaving twice already—to live whilst I navigate my way in business and create stability to move forward with my life. My head, it seems, is much busier than I would like it to be: making plans, constantly writing blogs, course content, social media posts & newsletters, producing marketing materials, and undertaking the many other menial tasks that are the responsibility of any other business owner. To add to that, it’s the long, dull, grey period here in Mid Wales, where it’s not quite spring, but the landscape has lost all the excitement and novelty of winter. I haven’t carved out anywhere near enough time for connection with Nature and immersion in my creative process recently. I am deeply longing for the spiritual cleansing—the baptism—of a transcendental morning beside the silent waters of Snowdonia (Eryri).
It is during these long periods away from the landscape that I realise the importance and significance of these momentary glimpses into the eternal and divine for the human spirit. To cite a previous essay of mine, Cleansing the Soul, published in On Landscape, 2025:
‘‘Mornings spent wandering amongst the trees with a camera in hand, before the world has woken, are enough to make one forget about the madness of this existence and return ‘home’ to the soul of Nature. They offer, for a short while at least, an escape from the world of ego, invoking forgotten feelings of belonging and a deep, universal oneness, restoring internal balance and harmony.
A fruitful morning of photography presses a reset button inside and allows us to see through the thick smog once again into the clear, icy blue of the vast, expansive ocean. It is enough to make us forget about all the trials and tribulations that we have faced in our day-to-day lives. Any emotional and psychological pain we have inevitably, either consciously or unconsciously, accumulated since the last outing is transmuted into the purest of beauty and given new meaning and purpose. In the precious moments during which our shutters are opened to the pureness of the mornings’ light, we are liberated from the stresses and struggles of life at last, and we add more colour to our souls.’’
Brad Carr is an internationally published fine art landscape photographer, Nature writer, and creative mentor based in Mid Wales. His work has featured in On Landscape, Outdoor Photography, Nature Vision, and International Therapist, and exhibited in national galleries, reaching 20,000 people. He works with photographers of all abilities through private tuition, group workshops, long-term mentoring programmes and Photographing with Purpose mentoring circles at bradwcarr.com.
📸 Where to go next?
I’m here to help you on your creative journey, whether you’re just picking up a camera for the first time, looking to get out of ‘manual’ mode, or you’re preparing a portfolio for your first book project or major exhibition. See the links below and find your pathway to more meaningful landscape & nature photography:
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Thanks for sharing. It's so very much me too. Moments of beeing one with nature, merged with it, so that the ego is completely vanishing. Timeles meditative moments.