One piece of creative advice I’ve received along the way is to draw inspiration not just from other photographers but from creative fields outside of photography. For me, one source of inspiration is music, and one of my favorite musicians is Ben Folds. You may know him from Ben Folds Five, creator of songs like Brick and Song for the Dumped. Definitely see him live or check out his live performances on YouTube. I’ve never seen anyone play a piano like that!

I realized recently that in addition to being a musician, Ben Folds is also a photographer, and not only that, he’s a Sony Artisan of Imagery. As a Sony shooter, this piqued my interest in him even more, and I decided to purchase his memoir, A Dream About Lightning Bugs: A Life of Music and Cheap Lessons. To be honest, I had low expectations. I expected it to be self-congratulatory and probably written by a ghost writer. But I was wrong — it’s humble and authentic and personal and there are so many nuggets of inspiration.

I draw a lot of inspiration from hearing about others’ failures and successes and how they stuck with it nonetheless. If you love what you do, sticking with it isn’t really a choice. As Charles Bukowski said, “Find what you love and let it kill you. Let it drain from you your all.” But that doesn’t sound super healthy now does it?! But that’s what this book is about. The book starts in Folds’ childhood when, as an obsessive 2 year old, he listened to records for 8 hours a day, and then takes the reader through him dropping out of music school (twice I think?) and multiple dead end jobs, bands, marriages, and divorces and finally finding mainstream success and some semblance of inner peace after many fits and starts and at great personal cost. It’s brutally honest throughout.

Randomly, I read the last chapter of the book first, which served as a kind of prologue that hooked me in immediately. I’m just going to share below a couple gems that I loved:

Great advice right? And so applicable to photography. This book is full of nuggets of wisdom like this, but the book is also a page turner that reads more like a novel than non-fiction. I highly recommend!