John Lennon Memorial, NYC, iPhone
Do you ever hit a “dry spell” in your photography? Honest answer, of course.
What’s your source of inspiration to jump start your creative juices?
We shot a video with Joe Holmes yesterday (you’ll see it next week), we had just unplugged our mics and our crew was putting away the equipment, when Joe started to tell the story of seeing the Beatles at their last live concert at Candlestick Park, San Francisco 1966. BTW, this often happens, when the cameras are off, we get some of our best stuff (happened when Annie Leibovitz and I found ourselves walking alone through her exhibit in SF a few years ago)— I was determined not to let another good one get away, so I asked Matt to put our shoot back together so we could capture Joe’s story.
He said that a major source of his inspiration for his photography came from John Lennon and Paul McCartney. I asked how it was that music inspired his images, he exclaimed, “because it’s art!” He told the story of being at that last concert with the Beatles and hearing the whole stadium screaming, but not just the “chicks,” everyone was, and it was so infectious that he found himself joining in and screaming in wild enthusiasm. The enthusiastic connection to sound waves propelled him into orbit as an artist with light waves.
This got me to thinking about the various ways photographers have been inspired and pulled themselves out of the doldrums. For me it helps to look at other’s work, not to copy, but to get their take on life and see possibilities that I hadn’t viewed before. But the really big inspiration is going to new lands and new spaces, or simply getting into action to hit that magical point of switching on my creative eye, getting in the zone.
Once I was asked by the curator at Nepenthe in Big Sur, where I was showing my work, for new images of the Big Sur coastline. I had gone surfing at my favorite (but secret) spot in Big Sur, in fact I surfed my brains out, then drove north to the beginning of that most dramatic coastline on the planet, and captured images from every vantage point traveling south. The intensity of “dancing” with the ocean, called surfing, had certainly propelled me in the zone and gave me a jolt of creative energy—just like Joe’s Beatle experience.
I’d like to hear what you’ve done to kick start your inspiration. And while you’re at it, if you don’t mind, attach an image that resulted…