Inspiration

Happy Thursday! I want to share this great song I heard the other day, just because it makes me well, smile.

It’s little things like this that make the world a little brighter and motivate me to be creative. Come on, the lyrics say to smile more and I’m a portrait photographer — I love seeing people smile! So I want to talk to you about different things and people that inspire me.

As I’m sure many of you have experienced, inspiration doesn’t always come easy. And as a junior in art school, I know a lot about writer’s block. I’ve had to come up with many different conceptual projects with 2d design, sculpture, and of course photography (film, advanced film, intro to digital, digital printing techniques and studio lighting). In the university setting we are pushed to make work that has deep meaning and a fine art quality to it rather than my personal preference of portrait, commercial photography. Having different professors with different pursuits have familiarized me with current artists such as Annie Leibovitz, Sarah Anne Johnson, Joel Sternfeld… the list goes on.

There is also this wonderfully different search engine internet called StumbleUpon. If you haven’t used it or heard of it, it will blow your mind. All you have to do is make a free account (which will take all of 60 seconds) and you will then have access to whatever you are interested in on the web. It even has a verb for using it. Stumbling. And on it I have various “interests” including arts, beauty, cartoons, comedy movies, dancing, design, humor, interior design, Italy, photography (didn’t see that one coming did ya?) psychology, quotes and weddings. After selecting these I hit the little icon at the top and I instantly have something interesting to read/look at/watch (you get the idea). I really enjoy seeing other artist’s work and just seeing random goofy comics to help me get new ideas for my projects. Through this site I have newfound inspiration from artists Cole Rise, Brooke Shaden, Luis Gonzalez Palma, Martin Schoeller and other anonymous artists.

StumbleUpon also introduced me to forced perspective photography http://www.stumbleupon.com/su/1vpSSI/www.instantshift.com/2010/08/24/88-brilliant-examples-of-forced-perspective-photography/ This particular stumble really grabbed my attention. And with my final coming up, I want to use a similar technique to visually describe that people make the world around them and create their own future. For example, have someone holding a paintbrush close to the camera and having a beautiful landscape in the background. Since this will be a project going on the next couple of weeks, be sure to see these at my site kimmariephotography.weebly.com and click on projects… and maybe it will inspire you to make something 🙂

#KimGarrison #TheTeam