• what's your super power?
I think that everybody has some sort of super powers. When I was a kid, I used to be able to bend my thumb back so far, it would touch my wrist. Made the girls squeal. That’s not a super power. That’s just stupid. What I’m talking about are those things that we do every day, yet we don’t even realize that hardly anyone can do them. If you’re a creative, you probably know what I mean. You look at a composition and you can sense if it’s wrong or right. You see color palettes or fonts like you’d recognize a friend walking down the street a block away. These are super powers.
Thor ironing up a storm.
I listed mine recently. Besides the obvious, “snarky mouth” and the private, “has ______ issues”, I remembered that my “brain has a built-in light meter”. (which used to save me some polaroids, but is now utterly useless) And my “Australian childhood” and “NYC later years” allow me to see life from two angles.
Let me give you an example. My last intern, Sri, was trying to figure out who he was, photographically speaking. Had a bit of a style crisis, you might say. I asked him to list his super powers. His first response was interesting. He said, “I’m Indian”. Nothing could be more obvious. He was right. This super power allowed him to see and think on a whole different creative level. Growing up in India had affected his sense of color, his ideas of symbolism, even his taste in music affected his shooting eye.
Wonder Woman and Hulk at the "Super" market.
Why not take a moment to write them down? Keep the list handy and edit it now and then. You’ll find that it really will come in handy when you’re in a creative mood. Send your list to me with a link to your work. I’d love to see it, maybe I’ll post it here to your embarrassment.
...Which makes me think of another one – I have the power to freeze time.