Creative Valuations: Knowing Your Worth & Adding Value
In talking to a friend recently, I realized that knowing your worth as a creative and in business is essential to finding one's individual path and thriving within it. As a creative, I can personally attest to the fact that we spend most of our time perfecting our art and how to speak to the world through our art but often times dealing with finances and building our business acumen get neglected. On the other side of the coin, business people spend most of their time understanding the ins and outs of business but often get lost when it comes to the creative aspect of a business. We both seek to understand more of the other's expertise but the key to the success of the greats is understanding the balance of both.
What do you know? What are you good at? What skills do you have that can be used towards a craft or career? Who do you know? And who do the people that you know, know themselves? It seems there are a lot of people in a transitional period in their lives where they are separating their own personal goals for their lives from the expected goals that were pushed upon us from youth. Society seems to be moving away from deeply valuing explicit knowledge and learning to lean on tacit knowledge. For each of us, finding the true path and creating a world within it is essential in present times. There was a time when succeeding in a career was dependant upon what you studied and how far those studies went. In certain fields, that truth remains but in other fields, another truth stands the tallest, "Your network determines your net-worth". Before we really go into the network, I think it'll be best to go into what separates explicit and tacit knowledge and how they play a part in your value to know crafts and fields.
The difference between Tacit and Explicit knowledge is essentially a break down of the left and right brains functions. Explicit knowledge is based on logic and information learned systematically, reflects the left brain in that is linear in the way that it sequences information. And in terms of business, the left brain is typically valued with a greater aptitude because much like Explicit knowledge, its use of logic and linear sequencing make it more easily communicable in order to duplicate a formula for continued success. In contrast, have you ever tried to explain to someone how to be creative? It is a much harder concept to communicate because it's based in something more implicit, which is the basis of Tacit knowledge. Tacit knowledge is based on knowledge gained from experience; an activation of the right brain where perception, intuition, imagination, and creativity excel. Both are useful and both exist within us all but whether we activate them or not depends on our awareness of them.
The first thing people want to know of us upon first meeting is, what do we do? What is implied by that question is equally as essential, which is what skills do we possess? Because at the end of the day, we all genuinely want to connect with people that are like-minded, people that do things we can't and people that we can inherently learn from. I, myself, struggle with giving a fulfilling answer to this question. As I was told recently by a stranger in a social setting, photography is merely a tool that I use to fulfill tasks under what it is that I do but it is not all that I do. As a creative, I create and how I choose to create varies depending upon what is needed to complete a project. Understanding the difference in that has helped me better understand people's intention behind that initial question upon a greeting, and in turn, allowed to me remain open to adding value to myself. Knowing that adding value increases your worth to other people also helps to increase the value of your network but most importantly, increases collaboration or referral opportunities.
This set with Nico (@nicoobaby) was inspired by a shoot I recently saw of Bella Hadid from 2016 for Calvin Klein. I have an appreciation for the contrast of skin and denim and how it appears soft on camera. The goal here was to take Nico's already beautiful aesthetic and create a sultry vibe in a setting that would help it to stand out. We found this Garden in DC that served as the perfect setting for this fit. We had to be quick with the shots during this shoot because we were in a public place that luckily happened to be shielded by tall bush walls, so we got off some great shots and then had a great conversation to follow.
