Everything you see, hear, taste and feel is an opportunity to ‘steal’ – to gather inspiration for the images you create
Being a photographer is beautiful; you wake up every day then (in theory at least) pick up your kit and create. Portrait photographers capture characters; landscapers portray the world around them; the product guys lift the lid on packages; and wedding photographers? Well, they capture everything from landscapes to fashion, products to portraits and everything in-between (as well as being counsellors, planners, jesters and directors).
Every month, as I sit and write this series of articles, I am acutely aware that I write from the viewpoint of a portrait photographer. Like most of us, I can switch genres (I love capturing a twilight landscape once in a while) – but I am a thoroughbred portrait photographer when all is said and done. Nonetheless, I spend my life fascinated by everything from a shaft of morning sunlight to the colour shifts created by hotel lighting. Maybe I will spot the texture of a wall or be curious about a magazine cover.
Currently, I am having a love affair with behind-the-scenes movie-making videos on social media: watching each scene being planned, lit, shot and edited is inspirational, even though I have little desire to move into film-making!
Every day, I will trip over, see, hear, taste or touch something that inspires me and gives me ideas. Not all of them are great ideas, of course – some are dreadful – but they are ideas nonetheless. As photographers, ideas are the very lifeblood of who we are. Without ideas, without inspiration or imagination, then what are we? Just automatons, creating the same-old same-old.
I love that I could read a book today; tomorrow, the words (and the imagery they conjure up in my head) will trigger an idea. The more I do and experience, the more tools I have to do my job.
And yes, this is a job; every day, my clients ask me to create images that will require all the skills and ideas I have ever accumulated. I need those tools!
Light show
For instance, on a recent break, the room we were staying in had four wall lights and one diminutive (but relatively tall) window. The light that these five light sources created in different spots was intriguing, to say the least: the warm LED (for we no longer have tungsten) pools of light on the green decor, and the bluish (though ever-changing) daylight that rippled through the curtains across parts of the room as the sun made its way across the day.
And that, of course, has given me an idea for lighting a portrait. Given that one of my bookings next week is to create atmospheric portraits in an old building with mixed lighting, I guess some of that hotel experience will be coming with me.
Similarly, as we strolled across…