Inspiration & Reading Material
Posted under: Many photographers often can rattle off a list of their favourite all time photographers with a snap of a finger. Oftentimes, I get asked the similar questions….”who is your favourite fashion photographer…who do you draw your inspiration from…do you know such and such?”
The answer I give is often a blank face.
As an engineer who started photography in the digital age as a hobby, I do not have the strict ivy-league arts institute background on classical photography. Oftentimes, after I gave my blank face, I felt a little discouraged that I knew so little, at the same time I felt the urge to look into famous photographers. But then it hits me, there are better inspirations out there. Hit the link to read more.
Let me clarify off the bat that I am not trying to bring down classical photographers, I’m merely trying define new areas of inspiration. Digital photography has changed the face of photography in many ways. One major advantage is that it has brought the once complicated and rather difficult art to a much broader audience with a much quicker and more gentle learning curve. This change has opened photography up to many new talents around the world and fabulous photographs are popping up from random blogs and photosharing sites.
Nowadays, I spend lots of time perusing photosharing site such as Flickr, Pbase or Modelmayhem looking at other photographers’ work looking for inspiration. There are so many new photographers out there with such a wealth of information that we no longer need to limit ourselves to the classical photographers. We can simply stay on the web and new photographers with brilliant photos will keep popping up.
Recently, with the new spring fashion hitting the scene, I went out and grabbed a few new fashion magazines. These fashion magazines are loaded with fresh adverts with full page glossy photographs from top fashion photographers and art directors. An absolute gold mine for ideas and inspiration. On the other hand, these magazines are rather expensive for what they really are…essentially 300 pages of adverts and 10 pages of actual content. My girlfriend recently noted unlike normal people I read a magazine for the adverts and not for the actual content…which may just have some truth to it.
On a side note, along with my magazine purchases, I also purchased Archives: 200 Best AD Photographers.
This is a fabulous book featuring fantastic photography and some amazing ideas. The outrageously whacky advertisement ideas make me speechless. I would highly recommend this book/magazine to anyone even if you are not interested in art. This book also includes some mind boggling photoshopping….I’ve got so much more to learn. Anyways…a couple more shoots coming up in the coming weeks. So more photos soon.
I have a similar reading list, although my favorite fashion magazine is metro.pop, I think they have some of the more edgy and original concepts, but without any ads. I also like Nylon and Paper (the actual objects as well as the magazines).
OMG is there any possible way I can look at Archives:200 Best AD Photographers!!!!