How to harvest and use your inspiration.

Hi everyone.

You only get them when you don't need them so much!

For everything you do, you'll need inspiration.

Sometimes it isn't easy to find it when you need it.

Or sometimes the ideas just pop up in your head every second.

The ironic side of this is that you'll mostly forget these ideas very quick.

So when you have time to take some photos, your ideas are gone.

Some will say that in photography there isn't much need for inspiration.

They say like:

"You can just go out there and take a picture of everything you see.                                                             Make a nice composition and the rest is postprocessing!"

These people are the ones who say that a photo of jacket or something like it,
will be immediatly great when there's some kind of "vintage" filter applied to it.
These people will mostly say too that a great composition is only about the subject.
Not that it has to be intresting or so, but merely that it something their friends have photos of too.

If you want to take good photos which are more than just a snap shot.
Then please follow my tip:

Be prepared!

Okay, I know this sounds  a bit contrary to what I said earlier.

But you should have your camera with you as frequently as possible.

Maybe not to your work or school but when your free, always have it with you.

But for example:

"My parents love walking, so everytime I walk with them.                                                           I take my camera with me."

 Everybody knows the feeling when you see something incredible when you've forgotten your camera!
To capture a moment in a picture, you must have a camera with you.
Without a camera, photography-do is impossible to practice.

For example:

"When you walk along a lake and you see an egret. If you are prepared you will have your camera and some ideas with you. The camera will make sure that you have a photo. The ideas you already have, will make sure that you don't have to think ages before you can shoot. If you don't have some ideas prepared, the egret will be gone before you even got your camera out of the bag." 

What you don't want is a photo of a random moment without a meaning.
Or when the viewer can see clearly that it's just a image without any thinking involved when making it.
To prevent this from happening, follow my next tip:

Write your ideas down!

My sticky notes.

I have always got a little notepad with me, to write down ideas.

And I know for sure many people too have one with them. 

When you get your inspiration out of the everyday life,you'll always have ideas.
But the ironic thing about ideas is:
The more you get, the more you'll forget.
So when you have a storm of ideas there is only one way to not lose them:

Write them down!

There is a nice quote about this:

"Genius is one percent inspiration and ninty-nine percent writing it down. Since ninty-nine minus one equals nitny-eight. You'll throw ninty-eight percent of your ideas away."

By Thomas Edison (edited by Mel)

Now: How to combine these tips!

This is very simple.
When you come home from school or from work, you just get your notepad out of your pocket and read it.
You should read it twice, or maybe ever three or four times.
But you should really learn all your ideas, except for the ninty-eight percent bad ones. :-)
And for when your memory isn't enough, you should also have take your notepad with you when you're out in the field.
So when you see something beautiful, you can take a quite look on your notepad to see how to make a great compositon with this.

Or maybe even get inpired for a fresh idea!

So get your inspiration out of everthing, write it down and throw lots of ideas away.
When you have you camera with you, you'll have ideas galore!

Mel

This quote fits this theme perfectly too:

"No one was ever great without a notepad"

By Marcus Tullius Cicero (edited by Mel)