A common piece of advice when making art is to incorporate creative constraints. Draw a picture in exactly three minutes. Make a puppet from the material in the same room. When the whole world is your oyster, sometimes it can help to make the oyster smaller. I unintentionally made a creative constraint I have never heard anyone else mention, so I thought I would share it with you here. We could all maybe use this advice in our own way.

[Editor’s Note: As I went to write this sentence, it struck me that I must be the millionth person to do so, but so be it] Lately, I have been getting into photography. I want to write a whole post on why, and where I am going with it, but that is for later. For this article, I just want to talk about my shoes.

Much like creative constraints, common advice when getting into photography is to shoot every day. When you live in a small town, that may become dull quickly, but I have found the best way to find new subject is to really look around. Subjects can be anywhere, so you have to see.

That’s where the shoes come in. I don’t remember where I bought them (online, I believe), but I remember liking the idea of Converse slides. I do like the shoes, but man are they uncomfortable to walk in when you like to walk fast. When I’m downtown in a big city like Denver, maybe two or three people will pass me on the sidewalk the entire day and they’re usually in a pretty big hurry. The slides, though, have a small lip at the heel only about a quarter of an inch tall and your foot doesn’t grab very well on the inside, no matter how tight you tie them. This creates an internal tension where, at a certain speed, the shoe is always trying to fly off at the apex of every step. So, I wear these shoes when I want to see the world differently because they force me to slow down and really look. I may be taking liberties with the term ‘creative constraint,’ (maybe ‘hobble’ would work better here), but they really do a good job of making me slow down and take the world in at a different speed.