People often want to know how an artist comes up with her ideas or what the inspiration was for a piece of art. When it comes to photographic art, artists seem to be roughly divided into two groups. One group makes photos by intention. This means they have an idea in mind before they shoot, often before they even pick up the camera. For example, someone might set up a still life or might arrange the posture and clothing of a model. Most portrait photographers and many landscape photographers follow this approach.
Other artists approach their work differently; they begin work with no clear idea of what they want to achieve, and they let their intuition guide them. This approach is more common, I believe, for abstract photographers.
Most photographers have a preferred approach, although they may also use the other approach from time to time.
I usually shoot intuitively. What this means in practice is that I will go to someplace where I think I might find interesting things to shoot (junkyards, abandoned buildings, places with unusual architecture, or places with lots of reflective surfaces, for example). I wander around in sort of a zen state looking for something that catches my eye. It's a very meditative way to work, and I can easily lose several hours without realizing it. Frequently, I will stop; something has caught my attention, although I might not yet know exactly why. When this happens, I spend some time studying the scene and trying to refine it down to its essential elements, the ones that still represent whatever caught my attention, without extraneous features that would lessen the impact. That's when I set up my tripod and try to capture what I saw. Sometimes I succeed; other times, not.
I consider it a form of hunting. I try to look in different directions where other people might not look. For instance, most people never look up. Somehow, it's wired into our brains. (I suspect that a million years ago in the savannas of Africa, predators would come at us from ground level, so our instincts are to focus our attention there instead of looking up.; if we descended from rabbits that are hunted by hawks, maybe we would look up more!)
So, to go back to my opening sentence, there may not have been an "inspiration" per se for one of my photos. Rather, I saw something that I thought was interesting or that had an impact on me, and I wanted to capture it.
Unfortunately, this makes it difficult to come up with a title. I personally feel that naming a piece "Untitled" is a copout on the part of the artist. If you think a piece is worthy of being displayed and especially if you are offering it for sale, surely it deserves to be named! The way I name my pieces goes like this: After they feel finished, I study them to see what thoughts or feelings they inspire. A friend recently asked why I named one photo "Male vs Female." My first response was, well, I had to name it something! LOL In that piece, the upper portion is angular and linear; that felt "male" to me. The lower portion is curved, sinuous and that felt "female." There is a line in the middle that separates the two portions. Hence, "Male vs Female."
Anyway, that's a description for how I work, in case you were wondering. The whole process is intuitive for me.
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