What Inspires You
I’ve been very inspired lately by various media influences. I usually opt to find inspiration from within or from my environment, but these three items on my inspiration list left me speechless in one way or another. I highly recommend you check them out!
What has inspired you lately?
Share it so that more people can find inspiration!
1. Maleficent
I list this one first because I saw it first, about two weeks ago, and absolutely loved it. It was dark and beautiful, exactly the fairytale I imagine myself to be in when I daydream so often. The levitation scenes were divine, the purposeful camera movements were dreamy, and the colors were so well put together that you could feel your emotions being swayed by each color scheme.
I was inspired to create a picture from this movie, and went the more obvious but very fun route of giving myself wings. I’ll have to do something more subtle in the future, but for now, I am content with imagining myself as a character in the movie.
2. Clone/Womb
It is very difficult for me to put in to words the emotions I felt while watching this movie. I had a lump in my throat the whole time, wanting to cry for each character that I met in so many different ways. It is dark, disturbing, illuminating, and sympathetic. The acting was brilliant (I always love Matt Smith and Eva Green), and the cinematic, sweeping shots in this movie were beyond artistic quantification. The cinematography was out of this world, mixing the gray and overcast hues with purposeful and meaningful closeups and wide shots alike.
I would easily put this in with my top favorite films, some others being Never Let Me Go, Pan’s Labyrinth, Atonement, and Blade Runner.
3. Agnes Obel
The loveliest person emailed me to send me a link to the music of Agnes Obel, and said that if I were a musician, this is who I would be. I couldn’t have agreed any more (though I can only dream of a talent like this, and have so much respect for it). I am a very difficult person to pick out music for, and this is exactly what I love about the musical medium. Sad and full and haunting.
What INSPIRES you?
20 thoughts on “What Inspires You”
It isn’t so much any one thing, it is exposing myself to the work of other artists. Last weekend I was at our local botanic gardens and there was one photographer, Tina Leto, whose work really stood out for me and was very inspiring. I was similarly inspired by a couple of trips I have taken recently, one to Oregon and one to Colorado. There is something really energizing and exciting about being in a totally new place. I have no doubt I was a nomad in another life, because I love to travel and often feel restless when I have been in a place too long.
Lately, song lyrics have been inspirational. I’ve been really paying attention to the words as they are sung and, in my mind, play out the stories they paint and try to think about how they would translate into an image. I especially love the lyrics of Stevie Nicks.
It goes without saying that your work is always very inspirational. <3 Actually, not only your work, but your words of encouragement are their OWN form of inspiration. They help to remove blocks that I seem to create for myself. So thank you. 🙂
Inspiration comes in many forms for me. I’ve been down the garden this afternoon collecting all the lovely long feathers that my geese have moulted, and I’ll hopefully make something with them. I love looking at nature at its shapes and designs, well everything around me really.
Inspiration to keep going comes from artists such as yourself. Feeling your energy and excitement incites it me to strive to do better. I think I’ll go and see Maleficent it sounds wonderful.
That is such a beautiful song, thank you so much for sharing Brooke!
I’m inspired by movies like The Lord of The Rings and shows like Merlin. I always felt like there’s something so magical about the middle ages, and I still want to create something based on that.
But mostly, I’m inspired by feelings. I try to harness my feelings and other people’s feelings as well and turn them into something.. pretty.
I’ve also always loved the movie Eternal Sunshine of The Spotless Mind. I’ve yet to create something based on that though. If you haven’t seen it, you should! It’s a beautiful movie.
AAHHH YES!!!! I’m obsessed with Agnes Odel, her song Riverside is perfection. I listen to her beautiful sweeping melodies a lot while editing photos, it’s really great for keeping concentration and getting into the image I’m working on. I’ve yet to see Maleficent but I WANT TO SEE IT SO BADLY!! It looks like exactly my kind of movie, and judging by your list of favorites (which heavily overlaps with my own favorite films) the fact that you enjoyed it so much leads me to believe I’ll just love it. Looks like I must search out this Clone/Womb movie, I’ve never heard of it, but I totally sold by your description of it! Is it one film with different titles?
Lately I’ve been really inspired by podcasts! I listen to several in which photographers are interviewed about their work. I just love hearing how and why they create their art and what it means to them. It just makes me want to get out there and create!!! 🙂
Seriously don’t laugh but 47Ronin. Not so much the story but the mythical creatures in it. It was free to watch on one of my streaming accounts so I watched it while in France:)
music for sure! lana del rey, florence and the mahine, none inch nails, perfect circle, tori amos,….so many. even music from soundtracks. i love that i create stories in my head when i listen and can create them in photography.
What lovely music! Thank you for sharing. I agree with the person that sent it to you. It’s you in music form! 🙂
Well, inspiration is something I really struggle with, but last week when I was at my lowest and seriously considering quitting photography I had an epiphany of sorts. A lightning bolt of inspiration, if you will. I was thinking about what other things I love in life besides photography (baking, family, books, nature) and when I thought of books one of my absolute favorites came to mind. It’s by Nobel Prize Winner and my fave author Gabriel Garcia Marquez and it’s called Strange Pilgrims (Doce Cuentos Peregrinos is the original Spanish title). It’s a compilation of 12 short stories that “touches on the themes of dislocation and the strangeness of life in a foreign land” which is something that I am quite familiar with being an immigrant and all. The cool thing about them is that true to his “magical realism” style of writing these stories are so much more than immigrant stories because there are elements of magic and delicious insanity in all of them. It occurred to me that it would be absolutely fascinating to create a photo for each story. I thought about what you said in your CL class (which I purchased and it’s been on of the best investments ever) about the importance of creating a series and I thought this would be absolutely perfect for it! So ever since I’ve been so excited about photography again. I still have NO IDEA whatsoever how I am going to pull it off considering the “magical” component to the stories but I sure will give it my best shot.
Now that I think about it there is a lot of magical realism in your photography, maybe that is why I love it so much. I highly recommend the book too. I have not read the English translation but I think you would enjoy the stories. Specially “I sell my dreams” and ” I only came to use the phone” So. very. creepy.
Such a beautiful song. These days I’ve been specially inspired by ballet and dancing in general. I’ve never been the dancing type nor the kind of girl who would like ballet, but there’s just something about it that is magical. I can’t wait to create a photograph with a ballet theme.
My inspiration comes from music (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y06VQkmlZeA), a figure of a cloud passing in the sky, a phrase from a friend, of my own feelings, my nieces and their antics, and people, just like you. But to tell the truth, I have not had great inspiration in the last days … And I’m needing it. See if I find it this weekend.
The sky inspires me these days. I’m always looking up at it. Clouds are just amazing and it’s thunderstorm season where I live. There are always towering clouds lurking in the distance.
I’ve never heard of the movies Clone or Womb. I’ll have to check them out. I love movies.
I got inspired by YOU… of course, haha 🙂 and the world around me. I like soundtrack and instrumental music. I also prefer sad/mystic music for my pictures. Apart from that books and movies inspire me, also some videos.
Do you know KIN Fables? If not…please!! Check it out… it’s a 10 minutes shortfilm, fantasy, mystic and dark… and really really good.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A8X3V-AHz8c
very inspirational, I think.
greetings from germany
I am most inspired by working through my own life. I find in making art itself while working through past pain, joy, confusion- I work things out on canvas or in in a photo art piece. Music can often help the process. I find myself in deepest of creative therapy levels when listening to Florence + the Machine and CocoRosie. Sometimes its Edith Piaf or just a random song on the radio that send pictures of feelings to my brain. Its amazing these lives we are given, and yet take for granted. Feeling anything is a gift and should be commemorated in art. In my opinion anyway. 🙂 Thank you for this blog by the way, it is in fact one of the most inspiring places I visit!
I shall look for those movies and watch them…. See what happens.
xoxo
Gigi
Brooke, thank you so much for sharing Agnes Obel! WOW!!! I don’t often buy music but she is just amazing, I love the piano and classical instruments combined with her dreamy voice and ethereal lyrics, am so enjoying listening to her! 😀
my biggest inspirations are Soap&Skin (like Agnes Obel is you in musical form, Soap&Skin is my musical form! 🙂 ) and you! 🙂 seeing your images has been a huge inspiration for me for several years now, and pushes me to keep creating, and push the boundaries of my creativity. Soap&Skin helps my mind flow with ideas each time i listen to any of her songs. her work is so beautiful and haunting, i can only hope my art does her music justice. 🙂
What has inspired me lately is learning more and more about the curriculum that I am planning for this term of school for my daughter. So while I am going online and getting or trying to find all these amazing (some out of print and very very hard to find) books, I am getting inspired actually!
I also have been inspired by the new show called Dominion, its a spinoff and picks up after where the movie ‘Legion’ left off.
Also another I really enjoy is HBO’s new show ‘The Leftovers” so both really thinking about Angles, Demons, Rapture, Ect. all that fun stuff!
And of course, as always, Game of Thrones!
London Grammar are also a great haunting sounding band! Im trying to find inspiration in the possibilities of something, and some of the most basic things, like yesterday, i did a photoshoot in my bedroom with the only light coming from my tv box being turned off and only having a bright blue neon light coming from it! 🙂
Not so much a recent but a film I watch every so often is Big Fish! It reminds me to hold onto my imagination. Also it reminds how important it is not to become a day to day person never believing in the magical and the impossible
Aside from you, my biggest source of inspiration lately is also music. The band Iron and Wine, particularly the album Woman King, burns through my brain as I a out shooting photos and gives me ideas about future images to make. Haunting classical music, like Franz Liszt’s Liebestraum, has inspired me since I first heard it 25 years ago. And clothing/costumes also inspire me. I did an entire series of photographs based solely on a long black cape and the sunrise. Your book, Inspiration in Photography, is one I turn to every single day to help me home my vision. It has become a supportive friend as I take this journey embrace myself as an artist. Thank you, Brooke. This book completely knocked my socks off, and I look at everything differently now.