“If I couldn’t be creative, I’d feel empty.”

Ahead of Adobe’s MAKE IT Local – Singapore event last month I spoke with Paul Burnett, Adobe’s Principal Evangelist for Creative Cloud in Asia-Pacific, to discuss what creativity means to me.  Paul filmed my interview and made a short film that screened at the recent Adobe MAKE IT gathering of designers, photographers, videographers, artists and fellow innovative thinkers.

Together Paul and I met in my studio in Singapore’s Tanjong Pagar neighbourhood to speak about a wide range of topics centred around creativity in the context of my life as a visual storyteller — from where I draw the inspiration for my work, why I love living and shooting in Asia and how I manage my diverse editorial and commercial photography businesses to my love for the smartphone photography revolution and how I believe it’s made me a better photographer.

As I expressed to Paul during our discussion, “that I’m able to pursue things that I’m interested in, to tell stories that excite me, to make images that I feel are…important…that’s what creativity means to me…If I couldn’t be creative, I’d feel empty.  The privilege to do what I do, to meet the people I meet, to work with the people I get to work with,  it’s the most exciting thing I can imagine in my life.”