When I was an art student, I practiced every day and had at least one camera with me at all times. That daily photo shoot inspired me to pull myself momentarily out of my anxious-about-everything brain and meet people all over San Diego.
Once when my friends were playing a big show at an excellent music venue, the NBC photographer who was covering the event didn't show up. I had my equipment with me, so I took photos and submitted them to his editor. After that, I was shooting music weekly for them until I moved to LA. Even though I was getting paid a tiny amount for that work, I was so excited to see my name credited and spelled correctly under every shoot I turned in. Also, I got to be around so much incredible music and met so many creative minds through that adventure of a job.
After working for almost five years at a corporate photo/video job in the video game industry, I had almost lost that camera carrying habit and only used my cameras when I had a family session, headshots, or for the day job. I am very proud of things I made there; it just wasn't ever really MY work.
Now that I'm out of the corporate world, I've been carrying cameras with me again and am pushing myself to do that regularly because bright ideas pop into my mind every time I leave the house with my tools.
Through this, I've also prepped a fun lesson for a new art student and turned this theme of keeping creativity an option into some of the work she's going to practice!