Inspiration

As a Photojournalism major one would assume that I have a bunch of photographers that I look up to and want to some day follow in their photo ways, but believe me or not I don’t really have any famous photographer role models.
I have some photographers that I look up to and those people are: Ryan Breight, Jeff Keson, Myles Mears and a few others. I wouldn’t be surprised if none of these names are familiar to you because they probably won’t be familiar to many people. These names are those of my peers and friends. I’ve grown up learning about photography with them and from them, getting ideas from these people, and watching the way they do their work. That to me is more inspiring in any kind of work I do than looking at photography online from people I have never met and probably never will.
Aside from those names I have mentioned and a couple of other people, photographers don’t really inspire me. Words inspire me, whether those words come from books or songs, they are what push me in any direction I may go in.
Lyrically speaking one of my favorite songwriters/musicians is Jon Foreman from the band Switchfoot. His songs really make me think and just go into a zone of zero stress; they make me happy and are the cause of some of my better creative days. It’s hard to explain why music is more of my focal point for pictures I take but it’s just one of the main things that makes me want to pick my camera up.
Books also hold huge amounts of inspiration for me in my photography, I am a huge fan of Charles De LINT. He writes my favorite book of all time, it is called Blue Girl. I have read and reread the book more times than I can count and every time I read it I get a new project out of it. Not always a photo project, but something creative.
I can’t honestly say that no other type of photography inspires me, growing up I used to love looking at National Geographic for all of the amazing photos in the pages and I always said that National Geographic would be my goal for my dream job.
Having a famous or more well known photographer would probably be a better inspiration role model to write about but as for now I am just going to have to stick to those people who I truly look up to and to the words I love so much in books and songs.

http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/switchfoot/24.html
http://www.sfsite.com/charlesdelint/bio01.htm