What are you creative influences?

Unfocussed Mike Many thanks for your very interesting thoughts Mike.

Allesandro B said

Unfocussed Mike said

By the way, there is a free Lindsay Adler webinar (in just over an hour) that may have places left and is relevant to this discussion about influences etc.:

https://invite.lindsayadlerphotography.com/creating-iconic-images-presentation/

great thanks Mike, this is really helpful

It was quite helpful wasn't it. She's one of the speakers at TPS next year, she says.

Unfocussed Mike said

Allesandro B said

Unfocussed Mike said

By the way, there is a free Lindsay Adler webinar (in just over an hour) that may have places left and is relevant to this discussion about influences etc.:

https://invite.lindsayadlerphotography.com/creating-iconic-images-presentation/

great thanks Mike, this is really helpful

It was quite helpful wasn't it. She's one of the speakers at TPS next year, she says.

Yes it was, cheers

Allesandro B said

Unfocussed Mike said

Allesandro B said

Unfocussed Mike said

By the way, there is a free Lindsay Adler webinar (in just over an hour) that may have places left and is relevant to this discussion about influences etc.:

https://invite.lindsayadlerphotography.com/creating-iconic-images-presentation/

great thanks Mike, this is really helpful

It was quite helpful wasn't it. She's one of the speakers at TPS next year, she says.

Yes it was, cheers

Thinking about it today, I think the most important thing I took from that webinar is reinforcement of the idea that for a commercial photographer, it's not just creativity that is an active process.

Inspiration is an active process too. You can't just wait for it to happen; you have to routinely seek it out and curate what you find, because it's not just what keeps your creativity alive, it's what keeps your business alive. Your choice of inspirations and what you do with it is what makes you a photographer people choose for their photographs. Customers actively want to see this in your work.

I've always known this on a shallow level about design stuff, for example. I'm not much of a web designer (more a backend person) but I definitely go "design shopping" when it falls to me  to do a web design based on really thin design briefs/brand guidelines. I will take my phone and go for a walk through town, download magazines to my iPad and make screenshots, and browse looking for existing designs that solve specific design problems I am battling with.

But the idea that this is a big picture issue as well is worth considering.

I have a Michael Caine quote from a Masterclass he did for young actors.

The other thing is you always cheat as much as you can - always steal, but only steal from the best people.

Steal whatever you can see.  If you see Vivien Leigh  do something, or you see Marlon Brando do something, or Robert de Niro or Meryl Streep, steal it - because what you're seeing them do, they stole. You understand? But you can't see who they stole it from, because they made it into themselves.

It's a quite a good guide and I've pinched good ideas from all over and mashed them up into "me"  (Possibly like 'All the right notes...' the way I've selected and mashed up might not be any good), but I've taken ideas from so many places, I can't remember what was copied, and from where, and what I thought up - even if I wasn't the first to think of it. 

For me it's most recently been books, but I've now started to spend a lot more time looking at the wider images on the main community sites. I've found both here on PP and more recently on Model Society there are lots of images that I like, or like elements of.

I find for me it's better to continually expose myself to lots and lots of different inspirations to help make sure I don't get drawn down any one path in particular and lose any of my own identity.  

I'm a massive fan of comic book artists like Simon Bisley and painters like Julie Bell and Luis Royo, so that's where I'm going body-wise and inspiration-wise. (Also, my own work. I often look back and think "okay, how can I do this, but better?") ♥ 

None. I just pick up the camera, point and shoot. 

Not being blasé, but as an aphant, I don't really do well with the whole 'inspiration' thing.