Hello dear reader,
I would like to share something thats been on my mind for a few days. I’m talking about The circle of inspiration. It’s hard to get inspired and motivated every day, you feel like you repeat yourself and can’t find anything new or anything interesting, you think its all been done before.
Circle of inspiration – a constant flow of art and creativity that you consume. To put it simple – one thing leads to another. In every little inspirational thing, be it a photograph or a photographer you admire, a song you love, a book you’ve read etc., there’s something that connects to the next thing. Basically you don’t stop. You find a link and you keep moving, keep learning and keep on being inspired to produce creative things. For example:
For the past few months I’ve been hugely inspired by Gueorgui Pinkhassov (magnum photographer). I’ve read a bunch of articles about him and his work, watched lots of videos and tried to learn and understand him as much as I could. I checked out his influences and his inspirations. In some interviews he shares that his main influence in finding his photographic vision that the photographer is famous for, came after meeting Andrei Tarkovsky (first link) – a cult Soviet cinematographer.
Tarkovsky was well known for unconventional filmmaking and photography and visual representations of ideas in his films were probably the most essential factors. I decided to study and find out more about the director, having watched some of his films a long time ago, it was a good opportunity to dive into it again. While watching one of the documentaries about Tarkovsky films I noticed the background music – Cello Suite N1 by Johann Sebastian Bach (second link) was playing:
Its a beautiful piece and probably my favourite Bach composition. So I downloaded it and kept listening to it. I’ve uploaded it on my phone and thought; I want to try go out shooting on streets while listening to this piece. I wonder what will I see when listening to Bach… Will there be a certain pattern or a certain feel to the images, that gave me another push to get out and do what I love.
Then I thought – maybe I could do something different and make a little video with this piece in background.. and so on..
That was just an example of how you could use a circle of inspiration in your creative process. Of course it might not work for everyone but I found that it helped me to advance and not stop in a rut.
Thank you for reading and I hope you found something useful. Till next time,
Yuri
yuri rasin photography 
Great post Yuri. I find motivation so important in photography (espeically street). As it’s not usually directly financially motivating (unless you’re a really big name) you usually do it for your own enjoyment and that can feel like a river flowing strong and weaker at times. I think it’s so important to have a variety of influences flowing into our lives. I also think that there is another circle of inspiration where we are inspired to do something, we do it, and then that gives us the motivation to do something new. As long as we don’t break the chain we keep the motivation going, but when we stop, that’s when it can start to feel pointless.
Absolutely Chris. Let’s stay in the loop and not break the chain!
Very nice. Very true. I feel that this cycle of inspiration comes in part by striving to keep one’s mind as uncluttered and unattached as possible, as this helps one to be open to new and even opposing perspectives. This is reward in itself because it helps one to “see” things–in this case, through photography. But there is also the narrative aspect, the revelation of the story behind the picture–and this is what makes your post particularly commendable–as the self-reflection is in itself part of the process. And here is where we can truly grow and express ourselves, and also for the benefit of others. So thanks for sharing.
Thank you for your comment. You wrote it much better than I did 🙂
Key phrase, “Keep moving” !
It is. Thanks David