6. Inspiration

We all need inspiration.  Or do we?  Where do we get inspiration?  What is the magic formula?  What button do I push?  What number do I call?

I agree with artist/photographer Chuck Close who says you should not sit around waiting for inspiration.  Artists show up and get to work.  “If you wait around for the clouds to part and a bolt of lightning to strike you in the brain, you are not going to make a lot of work.”  Inspiration comes out of the process of doing the work.  As you are working, your creative gene kicks in as you have to solve problems, figure things out, come up with interesting light, composition, design, mood.  While you are working, things happen, directions change, mistakes [?] are made and learned from, and then something else happens that pushes you in a different direction that makes you think of another idea which inspires another photo or perhaps even a new body of work.

Research is good.  Borrow from one, that is plagiarism and you go straight to artistic hell.  Borrowing from many is called research, and you are considered wise, as we all learn from the work of others.  Sitting on the couch dreaming of ideas does not put images into your camera.  Doing the work produces more work, which produces more ideas which produces more work.  Isn’t that inspiration?  Get to work!

“Inspiration is absolutely unnecessary and somehow

deceptive.  You feel like you need this great idea

before you can get down to work, and I find that is

almost never the case.”   …  Chuck Close