Who Inspires You?

The hardest thing about keeping going with any project, be it toy photography or landscape photography is the concept of challenging yourself. Instagram is filled with people who take essentially the same photo over and over again.

I know I can be accused of this as much as the next person. 

So I want to take a moment to talk about someone who seems to be challenging himself on a daily basis: +east mountain.  Even though he is nearing the end of his 365 daily photo challenge he continues reinventing his photography style. Sure you can attribute some of this to his desire to master the basic concepts of photography since he is relatively new to the hobby, but most people do not take it to this level. 

If you look back through his photos he has played with different lenses, natural elements like fire, water and sand, as well as experimenting with a variety of lighting styles. Just thinking about the amount of effort that goes into these shoots is a bit mind blowing, but at the same time I am inspired to push myself in a similar way. 

Ok maybe I'm not going to start melting my mini figures, but I know I am capable of accomplishing more than what I am doing. 

It is easy to look to the likes of Avanaut for inspiration but don't stop there. There is as much to be learned from the new kids like East-Mountain, as from the masters.

~ xxsjc

Who inspires you?
How do you keep your work looking fresh?
Do you have any inspirational tricks you can share with the community? 

Day One and a half ...

Goodmorning Sunshines !

The epic adventure is well on its way and we are getting the logistics in place to shoot great pictures, have an awesome time amongst friends, keep you all posted and do some mileage in our quest for the northern light and epic friendships stuck in plastic.

Yesterday we drove a good 500 kilometers from our Studio in the heart of the Stockholm Archipelago to the beginning of our quest, the start of inlandsvagen near Gothenburg.

On the way down we passed by the Swedish Hollywood to pick one of our crew members who was out and about shooting his own epic adventure in the zombie infested woods of Trolleywood.

Luckily no one got hurt but we may have picked up a few pieces of unplanned guests on the way. Time will tell.

The whole crew checked in an undisclosed location at the Avenue of Gothenburg, but someone must have given the hotel a heads up as you could see last night on Twitter (feel free to follow us there as well and get instant tweets as we move along).

While east_mountain was having a great time when the water poured down from the sky the rest of us of took some shelter in Liseberg.

And luckily we did as we bumped into Kristy who had taken a wrong turn when she was hitchiking across the universe from down under ...

The rest of the night we spent with Balder, Helix, HDR and some good beer, wine and conversations ...

Now, who showed up with some extra lugage at breakfast ?

K. I. S. S.

K. I. S. S. stands for "Keep It Simple, Stupid".

I was reminded of that simple phrase when +Christoffer Östberg posted this photo of Embo to G+ today. When you are editing photos on an iPad or iPhone it is so convenient to whip out an effects app to create a little mystery or a little sparkle.

It was inspiring to hear Christoffer say this mysterious effect was simply the smoke rising from a recently extinguished match. It was great to see him take advantage of the macro format as well as the unpredictable element of the rising smoke.

So not only did I walk away with a great reminder of one of the basic tenants of photography, I was also inspired to try something new.

Oh…and did I mention that I now have a serious case of mini figure envy.

~ xxsjc