My inspiration

I've been posting youtube songs on my Facebook account that range from sassy to downright depressing. My friends might think I'm verging on loco :-) I'm thinking I owe an explanation.

There are a whole lot of things I look toward to inspire me -- songs, paintings, poems, movies. I may pass something by every day and think of the lyrics to a song and eventually I will have to capture it in my camera because the words (for me) fit the emotion it gives me. When preparing for an upcoming engagement session, I may ask the couple to share "their song" with me, so that it might inspire me to take a photo that belongs only to them. Or I will put myself in the mood by listening to songs that evoke strong emotion. When I'm watching a movie, I'll see a scene that I think might be fun to capture in a photo somehow...or I'll view a painting and think of how gorgeous it is and wonder how I could apply some of that beauty to a photo. And poetry...there's a wealth of emotion in poetry, that I will strive take a line or two and bring it to life with an image.

The end result can change, and maybe not exactly how I envisioned, but nevertheless, it was the inspiration that brought me there and the photo would not have been created without it. So in that regard, I appreciate the writer, the painter, the poet, for sharing their vision and evoking the emotion in me.

Some examples of the inspiration I have received are below. What might be surprising is that the inspiration for a photo about a couple deeply in love may have actually have been inspired by the lyrics that (as a whole) come from a sad sad song...but it's not the song as a whole that inspires me -- just the one fragment that I focus on...the one fragment that I can't get out of my mind.

Airborne Toxic Event "Sometime Around Midnight" -- the curl of your bodies like two perfect circles entwined...



This was Andrea and DaLan's idea since they are infatuated with old black and white film and movies. This photo is modeled after "The Parisian Kiss"


Jack Vettriano - "The Butler"

Poet Sylvia Plath - "Mirror"

Painter Jack Vettriano - "The Temptress"

Madonna - "Take a Bow"

Maroon 5 - Sunday Morning - "fingers trace your every outline, paint a picture with my hands" (this was "their" song).




There was a series of black and white film photography inspired by No Doubt's song, "The Simple Life"

Norman Rockwell -- any multitude of his paintings. When I saw this at the salon, I thought it looked like a Rockwell moment.

And the following photos I do a lot of...is the passion in the kiss...or is it in the moment just prior to the meeting of lips?...Foo Fighters, Everlong - "breathe out so I can breathe you in."