Last week I spoke about feeding your creative soul, keeping yourself sane in a world where professional photography often means photographing similar things, over and over again, or simply shooting stuff you may not like. I spoke about looking at other photographers who keep themselves going through their personal projects, as well as always making time to shoot your own stuff to keep your creative soul alive.
I had a few emails from people about this, and yes that was only the tip of the Ice Burg. There are many things you can do to keep yourself going, thinking, and inspired!
The image at the bottom of this post is one I have been working on for some time, with this exact purpose in mind; to keep me inspired. I have never been a huge fan of hanging my own work around myself, I prefer to keep images that are thought provoking, images from great photographers that keep me inspired. However this is a little different. I compiled this image from various photographs of my closest friends and family, printed it, mounted it and hung it in my office. The image reminds me who I am, where I come from and why I do this.
After all why do we work so hard other then to be able to have fun with those we hold most dear? This photograph will always act as a tool of inspiration for me as I sit and work at my desk, a reminder of what and who I work for, as well as constantly showing me what photography is all about, recording brief moments in time, full of emotion and saturated in nostalgia! Images I can look at for hours on end and remember exactly how we all felt that day and the promise that some day soon we will have that much fun again.
This image never fails to make me smile, and so working under it always feels just that little bit less like work. You might want to consider doing something like this yourself, it may not be an image that speaks to you, it could be an object, a magazine clipping of the dream house you are working to, It could even be as simple as a clean working environment.
Until next week, keep yourself inspired, keep moving forward and just keep shooting!
Glen.
