Thursday, May 01, 2008

The ebb and flow of Inspiration...

Above: Driving round the south of the Island the other day I saw this scene emerge as the smoke from a bonfire mixed with afternoon sun...all I had to do was wait for a car...

I've been thinking a lot lately of inspiration in photography terms. With the death of my old computer I lost hundreds of bookmarks to photographers and work that made me stop and think, pieces that I admired, images that inspired. Sometimes when I'm taking pictures everyday for work I feel I start to lose a bit of enthusiasm and sometimes lack inspiration - some things that would have made me stop a year or so ago and raise the camera to my eye can now sometimes pass without me even giving them a second glance. Sometimes they are opportunities I later kick myself for missing - they inevitable sense of guilt and the feeling that a better photographer wouldn't have missed that opportunity. Not that I think this affects my work too badly, in fact some of the work I've been doing recently as actually surprised me because it's making me look at things differently and forcing me to create a style and through doing so gain a consistency in the work. However I still feel that sometimes I lack ideas for personal work, snapshots don't interest me as much as they used to because they are often meaningless unless they are good enough to stand out on their own (which is rare in my opinion). I have a few projects that I'm starting to look into but I need enough time back in London to get them off the ground - at the same time I'm searching for long term concepts that I can have slowly have cooking in the background. As much I'm enjoying the traveling I'm doing at the moment for work I still feel like I'm looking for something, seeking something I haven't quite found yet...the problem is I'm not even sure I know what I'm looking for. bugger.

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