Studies suggest music promotes creative thinking, and can be best exemplified by famous musicians who’ve also achieved success as creative photographers. Some of whom include singer-songwriter Bryan Adams, The Police guitarist Andy Summers, Rolling Stones bassist and record-producer Bill Wyman, Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young singer and guitarist Graham Nash, singer Lou Reed, and Fleetwood Mac drummer Mick Fleetwood, just to mention a few.
Neuroscientists say that musicians and photographers are very much alike when it comes to multisensory processing, and their adeptness at this attribute is a significant trait. In being both musician and photographer, artists have enhanced multisensory processing skills that allow them to react speedily; identifying objects and making sense of what they see with heightened sensitivity and awareness.
Multisensory processing is explained as one where the senses work together to produce a coherent representation of the external world, by way of two or more modes of actions. Where musical training gives individuals the ability to quickly process the auditory and visual elements of music, it is also useful as a cognitive tool for scene extraction among photographers. Music discipline gives creative artists the ability to perceive and capture a smaller and more compelling scene out of a bigger more disorganized setting.
Ansel Adams: The Epitome of How Musical Training Serves as Sound Foundation for Photography
Ansel Adams was a world-renowned landscape photographer and environmentalist/conservationist who gained worldwide acclaim for his black and white photographs, particularly those he took of the Yosemite National Park and the American West.
in an 1984 interview with Milton Estero, who is now the editor of ARTnews, Ansel Adams reflected that if not for his studies and training in music, he would have been a real “Sloppy Joe.” Adams elaborated by explaining that
”In music, discipline is absolutely necessary from the very beginning, as one will be controlling values and constructing various shapes. There is no casual approximation in music because notes have to be accurate. Otherwise, there is no use playing.”
Adams recalls that although he was being trained to become a concert pianist, he was also fascinated with photography. At age 13, he discovered the beauty of the Yosemite National Park and used his Brownie camera to take pictures. Ansel said that since then, he made yearly visits to the national park to take new pictures, which he later painstakingly arranged in an album he called “photo diaries”.
As a photographer, Ansel Adams said he began to see things more clearly: clusters of sand shifting in the wind, the movement of clouds flowing above mountain peaks, and small wreckages in the forest. All of which brought emotions that he said no words could express.
Photoseminars.com ( https://www.photo-seminars.com/best-camera/sony-cameras/) being the sponsor of this guest post, also notes that today’s creative photographers still apply the discipline of determination, persistence and patience despite the availability of highly advanced photography equipment. Presumably, the main reason why they are also successful in creative photography.