Inspiration

So a few nights back I'm trawling the net looking for something.... I just didn't quite know what. And no, it wasn't porn. Leave a comment with a smiley if that's what popped into your head!

My photography has been bothering me for a couple of months now, more to do with style, direction and ethics. What kind of photographs do I want to produce? 

Realising it's a hobby means I don't have to be as versatile, don't have to have as many different shots, styles and techniques in my bag, so I can start settling into a style - what I want to do. So I started surfing for portrait photographers and reading a little about them. The focus wasn't on the images, which I guess is unusual for a photographer looking at other photographers websites, but about their motivations, what interested and inspired them.

Then I found this website of this guy called Billy Kidd. He works out of NYC and he done a series of shots of a model that had no skin retouching done on it. All the blemishes, scars, pimples and freckles were there, and he'd stated that those features he'd left in were what made her unique. 

That really made sense to me! Really spoke to me. That's what I want to do!!!

I've seen so many photographers and models agonizing over skin retouching in photoshop, minor features that because they aren't removed are considered defects in the technically perfect post-production image. Everything from shadows, catchlights, the shadow from an ankle bone on the foot (I'm not kidding)... all are considered flaws in a technically unacceptable photograph, according to the rules, current trends and fashions at the time. 

Those rules, trends and fashions are created by photographers and models on internet forums and message boards, influenced by a very small number of people in a bizarre incestuous self-appreciating circle-jerk online society, where acceptance is striven for by emulation. 

Well, it was fun learning it, but I'm not interested in striving for someone elses definition of perfection, when their opinion doesn't really matter that much to me anyway.

Likewise I don't want to spend a day photographing someone, for me or someone else to re-touch them into oblivion so they can get slapped into a magazine and look like a clone of the last model who wore that product in the last issue. 
I'd much rather create something with character. 
With emotion.
With a connection.

So anyway, coming back from my mini-rant there..... something clicked. I know I want to shoot mono, high-key, high-contrast portraits. I want to utilise shadow. I want to use whatever lighting takes my fancy, and I want to produce images that I am happy with. That's what I want the core of my photography to be about.

I'm not ruling out funky motion-blur shots, januty-angled fashion images, gracious and beautiful art-nudes. I'll probably shoot all of that too. 

The core of it though - that's where I want to be, so that's what I'm going to do. Or at least, that's the plan, the inspiration.

Craig