Inspiration is something we all wrestle with as creatives. Where do our ideas come from? Why can’t we simply come up with them on the fly? Why do we wake up at three o’clock in the morning with the perfect shoot planned out? How can we get more of these kinds of ideas? Let’s look at a few things that I do to keep myself inspired and ready to create.
Before we begin, there is one thing I want to stress: these things work best if practiced regularly (I’m hoping most of you shower regularly, anyway.). The more you open your mind to ideas by letting it wonder, the more you will find that ideas come to you.
Travel photography has emerged as one of the biggest hobbies as well as professions in recent times. Of all the different kinds of pictures you click during your trips, street scenes are perhaps the most intriguing. If you like working wonders with your lens, here are the best cities in the world for street photography.
We all have our reasons for traveling. For some, it is an escape from the routine. For others, it is an opportunity to explore new places, people and cultures. However, for a large number of tourists, it is about the photographic opportunities that travel provides. The world is full of extremely scenic places that are just waiting to be captured. Not only the places, even the people, the events, the festivals, are all ripe for the taking. Whether you are someone who has just newly discovered the power of your camera lens, or someone who has been at it for years and feels like the camera is now a part of your body, you are sure to pounce on every chance you get to capture these intriguing moments around the world.
‘What appears to be a plain photo at first may turn out to be a piece of art, an art of daily life. That is how I view the value of an image.’- Luke Lao
He may have only jumped recently on the street photography bandwagon but his images, dominantly about reflections and creative play of lights and shadows, evoke a distinct style and maturity that are evident among the more senior, veteran shooters.
Luke Lao, familiarly called Lukas within the Facebook community of local street shooters, has leveled up from mobile shooting only in 2015. He recalls how he started: “I got more seriously attracted to photography after I joined the 2015 Fujifilm global photowalk in Quiapo. Since then, I have started regularly joining similar events, including organizing some and now I have become hooked in the genre.”
4Nikolay Gnisyuk, a classic but unsung Russian photographer
The history of Russian photography records names of authors, whose best works are nowadays well-known to every photography lover. Each of these shots reveals layers of cultural history and zeitgeist, in which the author’s personal biography intertwines with stories of his models. Nikolay (Mikola) Gnisyuk is best known as the movie photographer, who created an entire gallery of high-class portraits of movie stars. The first retrospective of the photographer, now on view at Rosphoto State Museum includes artworks created between the 1960s and the 1980s, which have never been displayed in St. Petersburg before.
The exhibition comprises 87 photographs, encompassing all 20 years of Nikolay Gnisyuk’s career, which can be divided into three periods. Gnisyuk first became engaged with photography in 1964, while working at the Riga Film Studio. An important part in his development as a photographer was played by Latvian art photographer Gunars Binde. In the beginning of his career, Gnisyuk was into portrait and genre photography. In the mid-1960s, he went to Moscow, where he created a series of photographs, capturing everyday life on the streets of the capital. Stylewise, these shots can be defined as early examples of street photography, in the modern sense of the term. Today, Nikolay Gnisyuk could be named the first street photographer of the Soviet era.
5Ones to Watch: Carlo Gabuco
More than 6000 drug users and dealers have been killed in the Philippines in the past year; this young photographer has been documenting the fall-out from the violence
“Kill them all,” said Rodrigo Duterte in March 2016 during his campaign to become president of the Philippines. “When I become president, I’ll order the police and the military to find these people and kill them.”
He said this of Filipino drug users and their dealers, and ever since his election victory two months later, Duterte’s administration has waged one of the most vicious counter-narcotics campaigns in the world. Anyone suspected of selling, consuming or being in any way involved in the drugs business is a target. Even police estimates put the number of people killed by law-enforcement officers and vigilantes in the past 12 months at more than 6000; thousands more have been injured or incarcerated.
