Can We Change How We Feel by Changing the Way We Look? Photography and Emotional Regulation
The creative mind plays with the objects it loves.
Jung
When we take a photograph, we don’t just choose what we want to show. Our emotions, memories, experiences and unique way of looking at the world also come into play.
Think, for example, of two people walking through the same place. One notices the light coming through a window; the other photographs a leaf on the ground. Both are looking at the same surroundings, yet something different has caught their attention. Perhaps one has found beauty in the light, while the other has felt a sense of nostalgia at the beginning of autumn.
What we feel influences what we look at, and what we look at can help us understand what we feel.
But how does this emotional experience become a creative photograph? How can we develop our own photographic gaze, capable of expressing something beyond what is simply in front of us?
In this article, I invite you to reflect on the relationship between emotion, creativity and photographic expression, and on two elements that I consider essential for developing our artistic language: research and learning, which allow us to broaden the way we see, and emotion, which helps us discover which images hold meaning that is worth exploring.
Learning photography also means learning to recognise what moves us.
There are photographs we take with our eyes, but which begin much earlier,
somewhere in our memories and emotions.
What is creativity in photography?
When we talk about photographic creativity, we might think of photographs that use technology to bring imagined scenes to life, almost like a dream, far removed from reality yet beautiful. Mental images that become reality. Some people call this creative photography.
On the other hand, there are photographs of real life, images with very little manipulation that capture unique moments which only emerge through the gaze of the person taking the photograph: a subjective and intimate way of seeing.
Susan Meiselas
In either case, it is the creative process that allows us to develop a distinctive style that reveals our own perception of the world rather than merely reproducing it.
Bringing this personal vision into photography means taking the step from reproduction to expression, from science to art. Creativity, in this sense, is what enables an image to express exactly what I want it to express: photography as a unique creative process, as my own personal artistic expression.
The philosopher and educator John Dewey (1859–1952) argued in Art as Experience (1934) that art cannot be understood solely through the object we produce. Its true meaning also lies in the experience we live through during the creative process.
From this perspective, taking photographs involves establishing an active relationship with our surroundings. We observe, select, interpret and give meaning to what we encounter. The final image is important, but so is everything that happens while we create it.
This understanding is particularly interesting when considering photography as a tool for personal development. A photograph may be technically simple and yet represent a profoundly meaningful experience for the person who takes it.
Creativity does not lie exclusively in producing extraordinary images, but also in discovering new ways of looking at everyday life. Perhaps photography begins long before we press the shutter: in that moment when something in the world finds a place within us.
And how can I make my photography an expression of my own artistic vision?
This doesn’t happen on its own. It requires two key elements:
1. Research and exploration, guided by a completely personal and authentic perspective. Just as learning a language requires listening, reading and speaking, what we call language immersion, photography requires us to look (visit exhibitions, watch documentaries, explore catalogues…), read (about artists’ work, photographic principles, biographies…) and take photographs. In other words: photographic immersion.
Robert Frank
Our creativity is nourished by our experiences and the knowledge we gradually acquire. The more images we become familiar with, the more opportunities we have to make connections, recognise influences, question conventions and discover our own paths.
The photographs we choose to look at, those we reject and those we return to again and again can offer clues about our interests, values and sensitivities.
Learning to look at other people’s images can help us discover our own photographic gaze.
2. Listen to your inner vibration. Pay attention to your body while taking photographs or doing research. Most artists speak of that powerful emotion they feel when they know they have finally captured the photograph they were looking for, when the street offers them the perfect moment, or when they find just the right expression in the person they are portraying. Roland Barthes called it punctum. I prefer to speak of vibration when we capture “the exact photograph” or when we encounter the work of someone whose images deeply inspire us. That feeling we experience just below the navel, which helps explain intuitive intelligence. Artistic expression is a communicative process between artist and viewer, but also between the artist and what is being represented. In both cases, perception, comprehension, understanding, and emotional and cultural dimensions are involved.
In Camera Lucida (1980), the philosopher and semiotician Roland Barthes distinguished between studium, associated with the cultural and conscious interest a photograph arouses in us, and punctum, that detail which affects us in an unexpected and deeply personal way.
The punctum does not necessarily coincide with what the photographer intended to show. It may be a gesture, a look, an absence or a seemingly insignificant element that awakens our memories and emotions.
This distinction helps us understand something important: a photograph never has exactly the same meaning for everyone.
Our personal history plays a part in how we interpret images. What moves us is connected to what we have experienced, what we remember and the sensitivity we have developed.
The vibration we feel when looking at a photograph can be an invitation to stop and ask ourselves what is happening inside us. There are images we look at, and others that, without quite knowing why, stay with us.
Chema Madoz
Intuitive intelligence and emotions are fundamental to creativity. This “vibration” directly influences our cognitive system, affecting how and what we perceive. Emotions trigger the release of neurochemical messengers that act on particular areas of our brain, modifying perception and decision-making. Neuroeducation understands this very well: our emotions change the way we think and guide our behaviour and what we choose to look at. They allow us to make quick judgements: “This is boring”, “There’s potential here”, “This is beautiful”. But most importantly, they help guide the direction of our research and the development of our artistic expression.
Psychology and scientific evidence
Contemporary psychology has shown that emotion and cognition are closely interconnected processes. Emotions influence our attention, how we interpret situations, our memory and our decision-making.
Psychologist James J. Gross, one of the leading researchers in emotion regulation, developed a model explaining how we can influence our emotional experiences through different processes, including selecting situations, directing attention and reinterpreting what we experience.
Within this framework, we can better understand that when we choose what to photograph, where to direct our attention or how to represent an experience, we are making decisions that may change our relationship with what we feel.
This does not mean that taking photographs necessarily improves our emotional well-being, but rather that photography can offer us a space to observe, recognise and express our experiences.
However, creating also involves navigating difficult emotions. Sadness, uncertainty, nostalgia or unease can become subjects of artistic exploration. We do not need to feel good in order to create, nor must every emotion be transformed into a pleasant experience.
Photography can offer us a language through which to explore the complexity of our emotional lives.
Daniel Goleman, author of Emotional Intelligence, points out that we have two minds: one that thinks and another that feels. Both are equally important. Emotions are just as fundamental as the logical, linear and verbal thinking traditionally associated with the left hemisphere. We do not think with just one hemisphere; both are necessary. Nor do we simply process information: we also feel it. Research and emotional vibration are important for our creative thinking.
Although certain functions show some degree of hemispheric specialisation, creative thinking, reasoning and emotional experience involve the coordinated activity of multiple brain networks.
Creativity does not belong to a single hemisphere, just as emotion and reason do not operate as completely independent systems.
From this more integrated understanding, we can consider photographic expression an activity that simultaneously involves perception, memory, imagination, emotion and reflection.
Artistic intuition should not be understood as a mysterious mechanism either. It may be connected to previous learning, rapid associations, accumulated experiences and evaluation processes that do not always immediately reach our conscious awareness.
This is why we enjoy contemplating certain photographs and love sharing those that make us feel something. It is why some images bring back memories, smells and tactile sensations, while others simply don’t feel right to us.
Esther Ferrer
To create is to generate more, newer and better ideas that have value, says Angélica Sátiro, an educator and expert in creativity. Read, research, search, learn, savour, feel, question, practise, photograph, have fun, laugh, cry, suffer, worry, rest, enjoy…
We are a vast catalogue of images. We carry within us images that have shaped us throughout our lives, some connected to personal events and experiences, others to our interests or education. Your photographic expression is already within you, waiting for you to look at it and develop it.
I like to think that our way of seeing is built throughout our lives. It is shaped by what we have learned, the people we have met, our experiences, our desires and also our losses.
When we take photographs, this entire inner world plays a part, in one way or another, in the choices we make.
We choose to approach certain places, pause in front of particular faces, seek out specific kinds of light or represent certain absences. And although many of these decisions may seem spontaneous, they are connected to our personal history and sensitivity.
That is why I consider it so important to pay attention to what we feel while taking photographs. Listening to our emotions does not mean allowing ourselves to be carried away by them, but recognising that they are part of our experience and can offer us valuable information.
Photographic creativity is also an opportunity to develop a more conscious relationship with our own way of seeing.
We might ask ourselves: What photographs do I need to take at this point in my life, and what might they tell me about myself?
Because every photograph can open up a relationship with the world, but also with our own history.
Finding our own photographic gaze means learning to recognise what has always been waiting to be seen.
Bibliographical and scientific references
- Barthes, R. (1980). La chambre claire: Note sur la photographie. Gallimard.
- Dewey, J. (1934). Art as Experience. Minton, Balch & Company. See reference
- Fredrickson, B. L. (2001). The role of positive emotions in positive psychology: The broaden-and-build theory of positive emotions. American Psychologist, 56(3), 218–226. https://doi.org/10.1037/0003-066X.56.3.218
- Gross, J. J. (1998). The emerging field of emotion regulation: An integrative review. Review of General Psychology, 2(3), 271–299. https://emotion.wisc.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/1353/2021/11/Gross-1998-The-Emerging-Field-of-Emotion-Regulation-An-Integrative-Review.pdf
- Saita, E., & Tramontano, M. (2018). Navigating the complexity of the therapeutic and clinical use of photography in psychosocial settings: A review of the literature. Research in Psychotherapy, 21(1), 293. https://doi.org/10.4081/ripppo.2018.293
- Chen, Y., Zhang, Y., Liu, J., & Gan, Y. (2026). Nature-based meaning-focused photography intervention enhances subjective well-being: A three-arm randomized controlled study. Applied Psychology: Health and Well-Being, 18(5), e70218. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/42725703/
If you would like to learn more about photography and personal development, I invite you to discover:
