What inspired you?

[tmcleland]

A couple of the forums that I've been into the past few days had me reflecting on my own photography, and began to

wonder what inspired others to make photos in the first place.

 

For me, it was while viewing an exhibit at the Getty Center in Los Angeles, and the old silver prints, namely the works of

Paul Strand and Frederick Sommers that got under my skin. I proceeded to "borrow" an old Pentax that a friend had,

trying anything and everything with it, before buying my Mamiya 645E, turning my whole environment into a series of 6 x

4.5 frames, f-stops and film selections, and consuming everything I could learn about photography both artistically and

mechanically.

 

So now I'm curious to see the answers from you all. Who were your early influences and who or what still moves you to

make pictures today?

 

Hope this isn't too sappy. I'm looking forward to everyone's answers.

 

tmc

[blowingsky]

It wasn't inspiration so much as the realization that I could "take" from the life around me and "make" a fixed map of the emotions, aesthetics and significances I had when I tripped the shutter. All I had to do to unlock the map was look at it. But then I found that there was more to this map than I saw at the time of making it. I realized that much in life is experienced at surface contact, the rest streaming by unconsciously.

 

Photography shows me how much more there is.

[richterjw]

For me, when I was a teenager, I would see other people's pictures and notice how something should have been done differently. I didn't know why it should be, just that it wasn't quite right. Now I'm not going to pretentiously sit here and tell you that I do it really well, but for the last 10 years, I see everything through a viewfinder. It's my favorite, if not most effective, medium of communication. JR

[James G. Dainis]

The works of Ansel Adams inspired me to use an 8x10 view camera and do my own darkroom work.

[SCL]

As a kid, I snapped a few shots. In high school I had a teacher who wanted to start a photography club, and I joined, then became a photographer for our yearbook. It just went on from there.

[timzeipekis]

Since the first grade, I always had a passion for art, painting, drawing, whatever.....this stayed with me all through high school, but I never even considered photography until my senior year in high school, I was thumbing through my senior yearbook and came across a photo, I don't even remember who took it, that showed our football coach consoling a player after a big loss. It was B&W (of course my favorite nowadays) and was so full of emotion, I was captivated. I went around showing my friends......"look at this!", "this is so great".....my friends didn't share the same enthusiasm and thought I was nuts.....17 years later I still have that yearbook, and still look at that photo.

[don_e]

W Eugene Smith's Pittsburgh photos. When I was a kid (about 4 years after he finished the shoot) there was a stack of his contact sheets and prints on a shelf on the 2nd floor in the main branch of the Carnegie Library in Pittsburgh. I used to browse through them. I knew nothing about photography or Smith at the time. I was impressed someone would take the trouble to take pictures of my streetcar stop 8-)

 

A few years later I bought my first camera and spent the next 10 years looking through the lens at the world through his eyes until Minamata. When I recovered from that, I began looking at the world though my own eyes.

[vrankin]

As a very young boy in the post World War Two days, I would climb behind my parents'

couch where all of their back issues of Look and Life magazines were. I simply loved the

photos and thought them amazing and magical, but remained a passive observer of

photography. There was much more pressure to be a musician, since I had a tenor voice

and a good ear.

 

In 1968 a college Biology professor gave me a 35mm Voigtlander camera and a roll of Tri-

X for an afternoon and said, "Bring it back full of photos, and we'll develop and print them

in my darkroom." A world opened. I've been making and sharing images in many ways,

ever since. The magic of images captured from the flow of time will always be there for

me.

[Spearhead]

When I was about 13, I found a photography annual from somewhere and it had photos of naked girls in it, along with some barns and other things. I decided that photography was it, started in the darkroom with my dad, and kept it going for a while. It probably took too long, but I realized that the musicians were getting all the girls, so I joined a bunch of bands. When I finally realized I had very little musical talent, I went back to photography.

[timzeipekis]

Jeff, you crack me up.....a 13 year old boy inspired by photo's of naked girls......imagine that..LOL

[seismiccwave]

My father always took me to his photography outings when I was a kid. Then he took me to

his photo club meetings and exhibits. I was amazed that how the same scenery I looked at

could be so beautiful in photographs created by my father and his friends. I used to snap

along with them with my Kodak Instamatic. Then on one of my birthdays (between 6 and 8)

he bought me a Rolleicord so I could take pictures with him and his friends. That was 45

years ago.

[manut]

My father. He was the family photographer and when ever there was a get together, he would ask all families together and then separately to come for the session. Still today the black and white photographs are the only ones that remind us of the old times, and they are perfect.

[samn]

Photography just kinda grew on me. I started using a camera for set ups for paintings I was planning. Gradually I became more inspired by the photographs I was taking than the paintings I was doing. It was way more spontaneous, and then computers came along allowing much more creativity with a camera and I was hooked. My subject matter changed as well when I switched to photography from painting.

[pjmeade]

Someone gave me a plastic camera and I discovered that it was fun

[ananda1]

My father. Days with my memory started I saw him shooting with his AGFA. He was very good in light handling and all of his work was in B&W. No darkroom of his won, he has to relay on commercial shops for developing and printing. He arranged most of his shots very nicely with good caption and dates. Unfortunately, we lost his collections.

Today with my DSLR fitted with 18-200mm lens, I dont think I am achieving even 10 % of my father's work.

[stephen_allan]

Seeing a print develop for the first time, in my early teens. I knew I wanted to be involved in something that could engender such a magical feeling.

[KenPapai]

Definitely my dad during the '60s. He shot everything with a rangefinder 35mm with color slide film. I loved the smell of film and started with a cheap camera; then finally bought a Minolta SRT 102 (along with my brother who got a 101) from K-mart and a 50mm 1.7 lens in 1973; high school album shoots, high school newspaper, basketball, rock concerts, railroad yards, and B&W darkroom days and I was hooked. (the more well-off boys in H.S. back then shot Nikon)

 

I remember the cheap zoom we used too which my brother bought back then, a Vivitar; he rarely let me borrow it.

[tmcleland]

Thank you all for your answers, this has been a great read..I'm very glad I posted this.

 

Howard: I too had the music background. I still love music, but photography...well... If it's of interest, Ansel also had a music

background, and I found out recently chose photography after seeing Paul Strand's work; a little fact I found out some years

after I had more or less done the same thing. Of course, that's about where the similarities end!

 

Jeff: Naked girls at 13...go figure!

 

Thanks again everyone!

[Norma Desmond]

Movies--

 

Especially those of Michael Curtiz, Alfred Hitchcock, Fritz Lang, and Martin Scorcese.