Photographer and Filmmaker Tyler Babin knows the ins-and-outs of being a “creative” in the world today. Babin has worked for Adobe, Gary Vaynerchuck, and currently is employed for comedian Hasan Minhaj as a creative.
Just like Charles Moyer and Thomas Crane, Babin has taken his creativity and made a life for himself out of it. When asked what the word “create” means to him, he expressed that
“In its most basic form, to create is to bring something into existence. Creativity is ultimately to do your best to live on your own terms and pursue ideas you are interested in.”
Tyler Babin
Babin’s approach to creativity goes against the grain of what most people would believe. For him, creativity is mechanical. It is about structure and method.
When it comes to trying to get work done Babin says:
“I try to stay grounded and work on creativity more mechanically. As much as art and things like that are airy and abstract, the more you can put them in a box is better. Majority of an artist’s lifestyle is keeping things mechanical.”
Tyler Babin
This is what creativity looks like for Babin. He maps out when he will work on certain projects and forces himself into doing them, rather than working when he feels like it. When art becomes your career, you have to begin to approach it as you would any other job: methodically and promptly.
As Babin puts it: “amateurs wait for inspiration, professional artists get up and work.”
We chose to highlight Tyler Babin last in the Creative Minds Collide series because his philosophy on creativity is the perfect mix of Charles Moyer and Thomas Crane’s approaches. His mode of working is to blend his creative flow with his work ethic, and this is what works for him. To be someone in the creative field, you have to find what kind of work is best for you.
Once you have been on this career path for a while, you might find yourself hitting a wall and feeling uninspired. This is completely normal, and Babin reassures this idea! He says that “Being uninspired is just as normal as being inspired.” I don’t know about you, but this is definitely something that is comforting to me, especially since it is coming from someone so successful.
When feeling uninspired it is important to push through, and the best way to do this is to not allow yourself to have too much downtime. Babin warns: “Downtime can be really dangerous so I do my best to give myself as little as possible. I know that with how distracting the world is if I have an hour that can turn into 7 hours scrolling through TikTok.” As “creatives” it can be so easy to go down the rabbit hole of social media (especially TikTok and Pinterest where creativity is the focal point of the app) so we have to be extra cautious to not allow downtime to creep into work time. It is vital to the success of your career to schedule out time for both and not allow the two to overlap.
Creativity is more than just doing, it is a whole process and set of hoops that must be jumped through in order to get to the end result, and Babin makes sure to highlight this fact in his interview. Babin has found great success in pursuing his passion, and his approach is contrary to what one would assume of a creative person. He, and many other creators, have redefined what being a “creative” entails in the modern-world.
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