Each Friday the folks over at Phlearn put together a series of images they feel would help inspire others in their work. Often it’s young, waifish girls in f-l-o-w-i-n-g, translucent dresses floating through the air in some imagined state of “bliss”. (Oh, the romance of the Twilight Saga and decades of Harry Potter binging…)

My taste in photos I find inspirational lies more towards the edgy-side of story telling; but equally, perhaps more-so fascinating is the work of filmmakers like the Brothers Quay, Jean-Pierre Jeunet, the Wachowskis... and paintings!

I will occasionally spend time googling names of artists or thematic material based upon something I read, a word, a name or phrase, some other touchstone then click on the ‘Images’ tab in my browser window. To follow is some of the non-photo work that most inspires me.

The fact most are paintings leads to a long-standing intention of mine, to utilize photography as the palette for making a series of “painterly” photo-illustrations – without becoming a Kelby-ish photoshopography exercise. (There are tons of toots glomming on recent PS features and Adobe-Labs software experiments that enable us all to instantly create digital “Fine Art” and “paintings”. Unfortunately most examples fall within the realm of psilocybin-induced Candy Land colors and über-cranked Tone Mapping in order to achieve that oh-so popular “HDRI” look du jour.)

Sorry, it’s not my intention to be snotty here; but a bit of self control (dialing effects back) and thoughtfulness (developing a story that matters) results in work like the following > > >