How I Stay Inspired

     I've talked about where I get inspiration but I also get a lot of questions on how I STAY inspired. I feel like inspiration comes with knowledge. When I didn't know how to do certain things or couldn't convey a story I got really discouraged. I didn't want to fail at something or show people bad work. One thing I've learned with shooting and growing in my work is to practice. I basically shoot an image every day. I never post every single one of them, but I do shoot quite often. There are a few images of mine that I've shot more than once because I didn't get what I wanted.

     For me, understanding how certain things worked really helped me to stay inspired because instead of thinking how did that work? I know how it works and I don't have any questions. Practicing your editing tools helps a lot too. Have you ever went to edit an image and knew what you wanted to do in your head but didn't know how to do it in your software? I have... and I practice and learned what works best for me. What tools are user friendly to me and what tools am I absolutely against? There are also those tools that I hate to use but tend to be very helpful at times. I found out over time that as much as I hate the pen tool, it's been very beneficial for me in many of my images.

     Here are a few things I suggest to do in order to keep inspired...

• Day Dream - Let your mind wonder. Let yourself revert into a child like thought process and remember what it was like to color outside of the lines.
• Take Something From Everything - Right now I'm looking at a game of Apples to Apples. What could I get from that? Well, apple is something easy to use. I can use this as a prop for an image. I often look at the sky. I could take colors from that particular sunset and use it in an image or mimic the pattern the clouds produce in the sky. 
• Practice - Edit an image every day. If you know you're bad at something (masking, layering, textures, etc.) spend extra time on that weak area of your editing to help refine it.
• Learn Perspective - This is a hard thing to understand sometimes but your images will greatly improve if you understand perspectives. Knowing how to do this will give you more confidence in your work and will keep the creative flow going in your mind.  
• Practice Storytelling - If you're interested in creating stories, practice them. What are you trying to convey with your piece? Sit down and make a list of key points in your story and mash them together into a story. If you go back and read my "Lament" post, this tells you exactly how I thought out that image in order to tell the story it shows. 

There really is no right way to be or stay inspired. Your mind is the limit! :)

"A Love Denied"