Inspirations

[RoganJosh]

I thought it might be interesting create a topic where members can talk about what inspires their particular style of photography. It could be a single photograph, painting, sculpture, installation piece, or even someones entire body of work. Doesn't need to be famous or well known, could be your best mates paper mache statues if you want.

Personally I've always been a big Jackson Pollock fan. Not so much his colourful drip paintings but the ones featuring more subdued earthy tones like the popular 'Autumn Rhythm'. My favourite is the chaotic '1A'. I feel like I've seen this painting in nature 1000 times and it makes me want to photograph the dirty, messy side of nature that is usually cropped out.

[John Power]

I think this is a great idea for a thread, RoganJosh!

I'm really just finding my way at the moment and wouldn't be able to definitively point to any particular inspiration. That said, I too enjoy a bit of a mess
I wonder if the endless supply of amateur images on offer through instagram and flickr are making finding inspiration and a style more or less difficult.

I'd be really keen to read about the inspiration of others!

[Walter Glover]

The summer school holidays were dragging on. I was about 6. My father asked me why I was grumpy and I said, "I'm bored!" There came pivotal parental advicee: "If the world is boring you, take more interest in it." The next Christmas Santa brought me my wished-for Box Brownie and ever thereafter my camera(s) and I have found inspiration the world around.

I maintain that there just 2 forms of photography: Commercial and Recreational. Working from 16 Commercially I was making other peoples pictures, not my own. I was a purveyor of what I referred to as 'visual haberdashery' — 6 metres of customised Harleys one day and 3 gross of dazzling buttons that couldn't remember where they'd left their clothes the next and a couple of bolts of Mc Mansions for the rest of the week.

I cling to Recreational photography as a vehicle to take my own pictures, pictures of anything that takes my fancy without fear or favour. I shun 'schools' and the tribalism of the rush to gush. My inspiration is the time and the place, and my purpose is a celebration of the 'the perfect description of the lens' made possible by the adjustable LF camera.

[RoganJosh]

Thanks for the replies Walter and John, you both made similar points in the rush to gush and the Instagram regurgitation. As a young person I'm guilty of fawning over certain artists and styles. When it becomes really obsessive I rationalise it to myself by saying It's all part of learning but maybe I'm just destined to copy other artists

I recently shot an entire portfolio with Pollock in mind, I'll put a few of them below.

[Walter Glover]

As a pair I feel there is a dialogue here reminiscent of a not dissimilar Q&A in imagery between Ansel Adams and his student (at the time), Harry Callahan. Right at the moment I can't reference the exact pictures but suffice to say they were a reversal of non-representative random markings of sunlit reeds with dazzling reflections in the meniscus against the deep black of deadstill pond water (Adams) alongside a picture of jet black, equally random, twigs in a sea of freshly driven snow drift.

As a clue to where I'm at with your motif, years ago I Got ranted at on a forum for saying I liked, and agreed with the wisdom in the investment by Richard Crebbin of the ANG in "Blue Poles". Keep following your voices within — they're the only ones that speak your truth.

[JackRussel]

Can I say without a photo what inspires me? A sunny day, joy in my soul, goals for the future and a cup of aromatic coffee
Inspiration is a delicate thing. Look for it in the little things of today and the past. And it will always be with you.

[Walter Glover]

Precisely!