Finding Inspiration For Your Photo Shoot
A few months ago I received a message from a photographer friend, asking me to do a workshop in Fashion photography. He said I didn't have to worry about finding the audience and promotion. All I have to do is to come up with the concept and preparing the pre production.
I was so excited to do the workshop, but then one thing hit me, I don't know what to shoot, or where, I was stuck and unispired. So I browsed my files of images that I have compiled over the years, no luck. OK, I needed a fresh idea.
Find an Inspiring Place
I think everybody have a "secret place" where they can go and be alone and think or work or just sit and chill. My favorite place is a small cafe, actually it is a cafe inside a book store. It is quiet, they serve delicious snacks and coffee, it is perfect.
There bites and two zip of coffee later, I started to get ideas for the photo shoot, but I need visuals, I need to see some photo references. Luckily there are plenty of fashion magazine in the book store. Harper's Bazaar, Vogue, Vogue Italia, W Magazine and plenty others. Now I started to get a picture in my head, but I needed a specific idea.
Pinterest to the rescue
Pinterest is a place where we can collect and organize images. It is sweet place to get lost into, you can spend hours just browsing and pinning. I have always ended up pinning images of food, instead of photo reference, but it is a lot of fun.
I started by entering keywords like : photo inspiration, fashion photography and boom plenty of images came out. Even if you type specific keywords like : Fashion in the Woods, there will be plenty of images to browse.
The last place that I usually visit are the photography blogs/ fashion photography blogs
Fashion Photography Blogs You Must Follow
Photography blogs are very useful place to find ideas and learn other photographer's techniques. I particularly love the behind the scene shoots or videos, they give plenty technical information that might be useful for my own photo shoot.Some of my favorite blogs are
Mellisa Rodwell's Fashion Photography Blog.
Mellisa Rodwell is a renown Fashion photographer, working for various fashion magazines. I find her very generous in giving away a lot of technical details and behind the scene videos. She discuss topics from directing hair and make up artists to showing you, the viewer, how to create an edge light.
Here's a sample of her behind the scene photo shoot
Vanity Fair Photos and Portfolio
For finding out new trends and portfolio, Vanity Fair is my favorite. A leading publication for decades, “Vanity Fair” has a special section for fashion photography. In addition to photographs on style, you can also view them for science, retrospective, news, and more. There are also many celebrity portfolios for the viewing.
Of course it has a button that leads to all Annie Leibovitz portfolio for the Vanity Fair.
After collecting a lot of visuals, I have a prety clear idea of what I want to shoot, next is the Pre Production process.
Finding inspiration is usually the hardest thing, once you have the idea, everything else are just technical.
If you have any other ideas that worked for you in finding inspiration, please feel free to share
~ cheers
