What's been influencing you lately?

[Lost Canadian]

When it comes to photography I'm constantly being moved and influenced by different thoughts and idea's. These ideas can sometimes be seen reflected in the work I share, sometimes not, but I often try different things or embrace different ways of approaching my photography because of some outside influence. So the question I have for you guys is, what's been influencing you lately? I know Pat has been really moved by the gulf oil spill which provided motivation for his current project seen here, but what about the rest of you? Is there anything that has gotten your photographic wheels spinning lately that you'd like to share?

Here are 5 people, places and ideas that have been lingering at the front of my photographic mind of late. If you have something, please share.

1) The 'One Day on Earth' global collaborative project.


2) John Kasaona idea's on conservation.

3) Frank Grisdale's landscapes.

4) The Spinning Head's words.

5) Travis Dove's 'The Holy Mountain'

 

[taco2go]

I think I may have to mull over this one for a bit; in the meantime, WOW! those are some awesome links there Trevor.
All I can say is that Frank Grisdale makes me want to throw my tripod away...that distortion is so refreshing.
I like his quote- "..my aim is to peak artistically at around age 90.."

 

[taco2go]

Nothing really as exciting as the above- at this point I still like to look at classic painters to get inspiration. For a while now, it's been farmscapes- my daily commute to work takes me along some beautiful farms.
More recently its been Monet again and his haystack series. He was a "light freak" as far as I'm concerned, and I've been having fun trying to find the tones he uses.

 

[Wander]

One person whose work grabbed me and still inspires me is Galen Rowell.

I have to say the many of you inspire me as well, I've seen some incredible work on this site. Those hay bales are impressive Joash.

 

[photoman]

I really haven't been one to follow others work but I find Travis Dove's work simply awesome. Incredible photojournalism.

Thanks for posting Trevor.

 

[Michael Slade]

I have been finding myself looking less and less at other people's work at all right now. I am more concerned in what I think about what I am doing and less about what I think that other people are doing.

I am preparing to take a 3-week trip to Sweden. Someone asked me what I planned to photograph while I was there. This is what I came up with after mulling it over in my head for about six months.

"I see the photography that I will do while we are in Sweden as being a visual record of the places and history that make up our Swedish ancestry. There is probably no detailed record of the various places and locations that record photographically where it is we have come from in a way that will make our Swedish heritage 'real' to those of us here in the USA that will never go to Sweden. I wish to bring what I experienced in Sweden 20+ years ago and what I will see and experience there this summer back to America to share with my family here. Also to be able to share with those relatives who live in Sweden the impressions and feelings of what is important enough for a short-time visitor to commit to film.

We have a rich record of the people who are our ancestors from Sweden, but have a superficial and incomplete knowledge of what those places that we come from actually look like. I want to step beyond the traditional calendar photographs and record in a more intimate way those places that draw us back. There is some kind of a pull being exerted on us to try to discover who we are and where we came from. I hope to be able to find it, feel it and photograph it for those who will come after myself.

I also have a parallel project to photograph very simple straightforward portraits of our Swedish relatives with, of course, a Hasselblad camera. I did several portraits of the children from Sweden that visited us two years ago while traveling through the US. I will take prints back and give them as gifts when we visit them."

So I am trying to photograph things that mean something personal to me and will mean something personal to those in my family. I am done trying to please anyone else...any larger 'audience'...any bigger 'crowd'. If I am happy with them and my family is happy with my images then I am satisfied. They'll be the only ones that look at them in 50 years anyway.

 

[Wander]

Sounds like a great project Mike.

 

[Lost Canadian]

Awesome response Michael! Just to clarify, we all have things that influence and motivate us, I was just curious what everyones drive or push to pick up the camera has been of late. What's influencing Michael and motivating him is a desire to create a meaningful body of work that documents his families ancestry, a great reason to pick up the camera IMO.

Certainly no one can claim they are without influence. If you have no influence why did you buy a camera in the first place? Everything I do, as I'm sure is the case with a majority of you as well, is for me. My reasons for trying something new or different is simply to stretch myself.

Now with respects to my first post let me share what it is that actually captured my imagination. The 'One Day on Earth' project is such a cool project that I keep wondering to myself, given the chance to document my world and share it, what would I want to say. At this point I really don't know, but the idea certainly got my head spinning. John Kasaona's ideas on conservation, something that is important to me, left me wondering if I could create something that would engage others to take ownership of resources that are important to them, say fresh water.

With Frank Grisdale's work, I really like the overt painterly quality he has embraced. When I saw Travis Dove's "The Holy Mountain" photo essay, I thought that it shared a similar painterly quality albeit more in tune with reality. Travis's work also seems to reflect a quality of simple light, that Asim Rafiqui wrote about here on The Spinning Head. This delicate subtle look is something I've really learned to appriciate and it is a quality that I've been trying to embrace in my own work of late. Ultimately, I'd like to look at my work and say "that almost looks like a painting" without the work being perverted to the point that it looks manipulated like Frank's work is.

These are simply the things that have been motivating me of late. I'm not trying to copy someone elses concepts, I'm simply embracing certain aspects of their work/ideas and am trying to figure out how those aspects can be melded with my own ideas and perspectives to create something that is uniquely mine.

So to rephrase the question, what, of late, has been driving you to pick up the camera? ...and please don't say pretty flowers and kittens. LOL

 

[Wander]

Not Kittens-Puppies!:victory:

I have been challenged to improve my skills lately and to keep learning so I can take the images that I have in my head and that I see and capture them on film (or a memory card these days but that just doesn't sound right).

 

[JayGannon]

I've been pushing my photography by starting entirely new tangents, timelapses, macro work and landscapes. Been an interesting change from commercial and portrait photography that I've done for many years, open my eyes and refreshed my brain.

 

[taco2go]

Books I'm currently reading

Books I'm currently reading will often set the mood for me, and probably make me pick up the camera- more than I realize.
I'm going through a Kipling book bought off a fellow ExPo member (Kellymoe) describing his travels in asia and america. Spends about half a page describing section of river they're fishing on.

Now I'm very much a begginer in my attempts at capturing images of the natural world around me- but if a creek or stream that I happen upon during a hike/walk happens to match the mental picture of what that paragraph conjured up- I know I will stop and give it a shot.

BTW, with regards to Holy Mountain- I had to pull that old issue of National Geographic with the beautifully written article on Mount Athos. I remember being impressed by how well the story and the pictures worked together to convey the plight of this precarious and remote peninsula. I wonder how much Travis Dove and the author collaborated

Seeing those pictures by Travis Dove on their own, is a different visual experience altogether, but the message of the article keeps coming back. Eg: The picture of the big burly monk lifting a rock- a former nightclub bouncer, now part of a monastic order.

All this to say that the written word also influences me more than I realize of late.

 

[Every Miles A Memory]

So I've been thinking about this for a few days now trying to pay attention to what inspires me each morning to load up the camera bag and head out.

I'm about 3/4 of the way through a book I won from ThinkTank on one of their Facebook contests written by Dane Sanders, it's called Fast Track Photographer and is about what you need to do to create a presence in todays market.

Sort of off topic from what inspires me to go out and shoot, but in a way, sitting still right now has really made me focus on our last 4 years of travels.

I have a few terabytes worth of images that we've collected and other than post them on a few different forums, I keep them horded up to myself.

I've recently ordered a slew of mats, frames and other items to start picking out the best of the best, and submit them to a few different galleries. I hoping to recoup some of the expenses the last 4 years have cost us.

Where is this leading, well I'll explain. Many photos are really good when they go with a story or are a series of like images that help tell that story, what I'm finding are when you try to narrow a few terabytes worth of images down to 20-30 images that are suitable to hang in a gallery, it becomes very hard to pick and sort them out.

So what has been in the front of my mind every time I pick up that camera lately is "What does this image say?" "Can this image stand alone on its own or will it only be able to be used with the current story I'm talking about right now?"

When ever I feel like I'm in a rut, I simply go to a few issues of Overland Journal, flip through a few of the coffee table books I have lying around the house and I know this might sound pompous, but I sit and watch the screen saver on the computer in the office that scrolls our best of the best from our past travels. This usually helps me know that every photographer has some down time between good adventures that they need to reflect on what they've shot, what they want to shoot next and where they're going in their career as a photographer.

I know I've been browsing a bunch of the photographers stuff on here to get different ideas for the upcoming U.P. Overland adventure we're headed to in August. I just got the Canon 16-35 which is a mean combination on the fullframe 5D. I cant wait for this adventure to get back on the road and get back behind the camera and our true passion....Travel Photography

 

[Wander]

Sounds like you need an editor Pat. A fresh pair of eye's to help you pare down the choices. I can imagine finding the right image is very tough with the amount of choices you have, I'd always be worried that I forgot an image.

So when's the book coming out???

 

[Every Miles A Memory]

So when's the book coming out???

I've made a few small ones for friends or specific areas we've visited, but never a nice, hard cover coffee table style book. I've been kicking around the idea, but again, I'd need an editor or help in pairing down the selection..unless I wanted it to look like a thick reference bible of North America:victory:

I think I'll keep shooting and let me kid or grand kids put the book together...LOL