So I've just finished watching the first New Zealand series of 'Survivor' (spoiler - Avi won).
In case you have actually been surviving on a deserted beach for the past 15 years, you will know Survivor is a TV show where 15 or so individuals from varied backgrounds, are thrown together to live on a secluded beach on a tropical island for 30-40 days. Along with 'surviving', they also have to complete tasks and vote members of their tribe out over the period of time, so they one of the contestants can be crowned 'sole-survivor' and they win an arbitrary amount of money and have 15 mins of fame.
I could finish this blog post here (and leave you wondering what on earth has this got to do with photography) ...... but I won't.
When I studied medicine, we were taught this social concept called 'Maslows Hierarchy of Needs'. It is basically a representation of what your typical human-being needs. The bottom layers need to be created, developed and substantial, before the next tier can progress and develop, otherwise the construct just doesn't work. (I've included a more recent adaptation of the concept to include 'wifi' - which we all know is much more important than food and shelter).
This image was nothing without Wifi
Finally, I can say the word 'creativity' - note how high up the pyramid that is, which implies that there is a whole lot of other issues far more important to 'surviving' than being creative. Now take this concept as you will, I would probably argue that some people need to be creative to find wifi (or less importantly, creative to find food and water - like the survivor contestants), but I think the concept is nice way of thinking about what our creativity needs to flourish.
Take your standard child for example (is there such a thing as a standard child?), generally, they have shelter, a safe environment, a loving family, the self esteem that comes with being a small person, and therefore they have the ability to be creative and make vehicles out of cardboard boxes, wands out of sticks or use jumpers for goal posts.
So yeah, unless you get yourself a fast broadband wifi connection, you will never flourish as an artist ay? My internet keeps cutting out, so I will have to end this post here as .................. ////
Maslows Triangle (adapted for the infomation age)