Inputs and Outputs

My practical tips for keeping your work feeling FRESH 🌱

Hi VIPs!

This month on the free letter, I spoke about online image sharing platforms and the effects they have on current photography (spoiler: everything starts to look the same!). I mentioned in the piece that there are a number of systems that I have in place to keep my references different from what’s circulating on Pinterest, and thus hopefully keeping my work feeling fresh and new. 

I’m gonna cut right to the chase and give y’all a look at four of my #hacks for keeping my work and ideas feeling fresh. I’ll also quickly mention: trends are ooooobviously not unique to photography–it’s just the medium I notice most because it’s such a big part of what I do–so I think that these systems will help anyone working within any medium.

A photo of a page from the painter Mark Ryden’s book, The Gay Nineties, that I found in a bookstore and loves but couldn’t afford to buy. So here it is, ready to be added to my database 🤓

1. Keep your references freaky and varied: did you recently watch a cool arthouse movie? Awesome, hit the IMDB page and grab your favorite stills! Found a kickass collection of old magazines or vintage postcards at an estate sale? Take some quick iPhone shots of your favorite pages. I love having archives of everything that inspires me, especially when they span across lots of different media. It’s exciting to me when I can find the perfect photo reference in say, a Mark Ryden painting or an animated Tim Burton clip. Because the medium is different, it’s not immediately obvious how it’ll translate into a photograph, which then naturally encourages me to take my own liberties with it. When you’re inspired by other media, I think it’ll naturally make the work you’re doing in your own medium inherently interesting.