shots, notes and stray thoughts

in my quest for inspiration i’ve come across an interesting interview with chris buck at ‘a photo editor‘. here a sample:

One of the things I say to young photographers now is that what you react against is far more powerful than what you are influenced by. I loved Irving Penn and Anton Corbijn at the time and it’s one thing for me to be influenced by them and say I want to make cool pictures like them but it’s something completely different to see the mid 80’s sunset lighting with blue sky behind (that was the prominent look at the time) and think “how lame.” For me there’s no mystery to it and it’s very heroic which is also something I didn’t like, so I find my reaction against that stuff to be far more exciting

here’s another interesting bit:

I do a lot of research before a portrait shoot, because I don’t want to go into a shoot scratching my head thinking what am I going to do here and I don’t really have time during the shoot to come up with ideas.

Here’s a typical shoot: I’m given an assignment, I research the person a bit, read some interview’s, then talk to the magazine and finally go away and write up 7 different ideas for shots. I’ll go somewhere quiet and sit and think of ideas. I also have a list of ideas that I’ve been building over the last 10 years or so.

read on about how he keeps a long list of ideas and on advise not to work as an assistant. Part one here and an even more interesting part two here.

picture lifted from www.chrisbuck.com

and here’s a clip from youtube. i especially enjoyed the part where he explains how he tried to convince David Hasselhoff to wear lederhosen in a shoot.