“Where do you get your inspiration from?” is perhaps the question most frequently posed to creatives. And it’s a tough one to answer – there is so much in today’s modern life to inspire us, but mostly we are subjected to such a barrage of visual stimulus that it’s sometimes hard to separate ourselves and keep our thoughts pure and original.
Sometimes, the simple answer is to look to others for inspiration.
As photography addicts, we are constantly flicking through magazines hoping for the latest trend, a splash of colour or a quirky composition to spark our imagination. Many creatives reference retro imagery – examples of this are recent Stella McCartney ads (below) with definite influences from a beautiful Carlo Mollino book of his polaroid collections, which you can order here. You can see where themes from different images have been used to create the Stella ads, plus a very similar lighting technique to achieve the muted, polaroid feel. I had in fact bought this book as my own inspiration, but after seeing this campaign didn’t want to look like I had just copied it!
The message of this post is that sometimes we struggle to be wonderfully original and achieve great heights of individuality. This example shows how you can take an old image, modernise it and make it your own.
But what really matters is creating an image that you are proud to put your name to and which may in turn inspire others.
