Inspiration

One of my favourite parts of my job (working full time for a photographer) is to find references for up and coming shoots. Often a client will ask for examples of lighting and make up ideas from the photographer. This can be a starting point when collaborating. If there is the time, the editor, stylist and photographer will meet up to develop the story and what they both want out of it (not all the time does the photographer agree!!). References can play quite an important part in how my boss works and I love hunting around, we have a huge huge collection of images from 1910 - 1930s.

With the rise of tumblr, blogs and pinterest over the last few year there is an absolute wealth of information and imagery out there. When I started, just 5 years ago it was a lot harder. Before everything was on the interweb, research mainly relied on your own magazine and book collection. Now everything is scanned in and kept. I keep images from each shoot / idea all catergorised to create a enormous database I still add to weekly. It really has made an impact of what people are producing now. Magazine editorials are becoming lot more diverse - my two cents anyway.

The downside of the likes of tumblr things rarely get credited, and if you see something it is a bitch if you want to know the artist to find more of their work. Some AOP types can get arsey about not being correctly credited when your work is reproduced online- personally the internet has gone way past that, everyone sees everything and we can all copy+paste. When portraits of a well known artist gets published from us, the fans go mad and I see within hours the images have been re-photoshopped and changed often with no credit to my boss. It's flattering!

Here are some of my all time favourites of new and old that have provided great influence on a ongoing personal project.