I'm Stuck! Four shots of WD-40 for the Brain.

Many photography courses require students to develop a final project or portfolio--several images that are conceptually, thematically, and aesthetically cohesive. What do you do if you can't come up with an idea? Almost any subject has the potential to be interesting, and this can be overwhelming.

Artists generate ideas and work in different ways. Some "do in order to know", whereas others tend to "know in order to do." Most go back and forth. They try something, they think about it, they listen to what others think about it, they try something else, and start thinking about it again. The "do in order to know" camp often describe their process as "intuitive", while the "know in order to do" people might consider themselves more "conceptual." Personally, I'm not all that interested in these binaries.

From my own experience and from working with students, it seems that most people go back and forth. Working "intuitively" sounds romantic, but ideas and motivations for making art don't just mysteriously emerge from nowhere. Despite those wonderful, seemingly "eureka!" moments, a great idea is the result of thinking and looking and being "plugged in" to the culture, the art world, a peer group, etc.

WD-40/1: Research. Look at magazines. Watch TV. Listen to NPR. Read books. Have conversations about photography, politics, shoes, killer whales...whatever you're interested in.

And that leads me to WD-40/2. Know what you're interested in. I'm obsessed with stacks of things. I love repetition. When I see a neatly stacked tower of bathroom towels it makes me really happy. In my art making process, I repeat things. I stack, and I think I know what it's about. In some ways it's about the capitalist "more is more" ethos; excess to the point of obscenity. But the higher the stack gets, the more vulnerable it is. I like that idea, too. I like the idea of something getting so big that it defies all the laws of gravity. What do you like?

WD-40/3: Try something silly. Get a stack of index cards. Write some random words on them (adjectives are good). Shuffle. Lay out a few. Now imagine what kind of a photograph you would make to illustrate that combination of words. Or, try playing the art "love child" game. What kind of work would the love child of Diane Arbus and Ansel Adams make? Hmm...freakish landscapes...could be kind of cool.

WD-40/4: If all else fails, just do it. Just shoot. Don't worry about what it means. Sometimes others can help you figure that out. And don't give up on a project if you don't get results right away. See if you can shoot and edit and think and re-shoot your way out of what might seem to be a dead end. If you're really really stuck, set a really narrow set of parameters. For example, only shoot one room in your house for a week or one person's face for a month, or one object every hour for a day. Ironically, sometimes the most innovative ideas can be generated from the spots that seem the tightest.

Please add your own comments and helpful hints!