Inward for Inspiration

This is a project we’ve been keeping track of all year long. We did it last year too. Its been suggested to photographers that they keep a folder on their desktop, reserved only for photos that take their breath away. Photos that speak to them, photos they see as “really good” or “high quality”, photos that evoke emotion, photos that truly inspire them. The only rule? These photos must be YOUR OWN. That’s right, find inspiration from yourself, not just from others. It’s a good thing, we think, to look up to and admire other seasoned and incredibly talented photographers. We follow the work of many such photographers on a daily basis as a source of inspiration. But this Inward for Inspiration project gives us the freedom to look at our own work, and find things within it that we appreciate. This is a way to measure your progress, and track your improvement. Most importantly, what this project does is give us a sense of who we are, and what we truly want our work to be. Sure, we can point to any of those amazing photographers and say “we want our photos to look just like that”… but that wouldn’t be fair. That’s THEIR work, their heart and soul. Yes, we should find qualities about their work that we want to emulate, but mimic? No. We should find our truest form of inspiration from the photos WE take that remind us of the type of photographers we want to become. And today we are sharing some of the images from that folder on our desktop. When we look at these, we hope to see progression and improvement technically speaking, we hope to see emotion, honesty, realness, and parts of a bigger story. Here are some photos we took in 2014 that we will continue to look to as inspiration for 2015…