Finding Visual Inspirations

Last week I have introduced you to the 365 Project by Maciek Leśniak. Maciek said that the most important thing he has learned with his project is an ability to find inspiration literally everywhere. While this is a very important skill, everyone needs to develop it by themselves. Today I would like to show you a few useful ideas on finding inspirations on the web and creating your own, independent catalog of creative sources.

Where and Why…

As a photographer, web designer, web developer and a very curious individual I need to visit really many different places to keep up with all my interests. During last few years I have developed a “catalog” of websites which can daily provide me with a bunch of articles, visuals and ideas.

Fubiz - a place where you can satisfy all your creative needs. I’m not kidding, I love this site, even though it’s in French. Skillful developers have given us an ability to instantly translate all articles on the website, however the quality of translations is not satisfactory. They used to use google, however, now it is some other service and it seems much worse.

Anyway, Fubiz is a place for designers, photographers and everyone with a need for inspiration. Try it ASAP, you’ll never regret it.

Notcot is a specific site with 614 pages of quality links (at the time of writing this). Newest post with a impressive number 27701 is about a design of hot-water bottles, how cool is that? Notcot provides a thumbnail of post it’s linking to and a short description. It’s specific (blog-like) form of continuous pages with pictures and links is just awesome. For people searching for fashion inspiration, they have a special page: notcouture.com and for liquor lovers there is liqurious.com.

Notcot has it all, architecture, furniture, photography, design, web design and much much more.

The above sites are very broad when it comes to content. They feed our brains with ideas that aren’t necessarily related to photography, although this opens our minds and lets us think outside of the box.

People interested in web design are probably already aware of many inspirational sources, however, I would like to recommend two sites, even for people not particularly interested in web so much.

Smashing Magazine is a place for all web developers, graphic designers and web entrepreneurs. They have a photo column as well, but it isn’t so good to recommend it by itself (still you should check it). Yet SM has an enormous amount of articles on many fields concerning web as a whole, which I find stimulating and even exalting.

ReadWriteWeb, that’s even more web-oriented site, although a one you shouldn’t omit checking. Every photographer wanting to make their photos seen on web need to know social media basics. ReadWriteWeb is not only basics, it’s a complete guide to blogging and networking. You could spend your life reading all their articles and articles they’re recommending. Check it out!

When it comes to photography-specific websites, just check my blogroll on the right. Each of these photographers is a great writer and blogger. I can recommend all of them. However, to make things a bit easier, the ones you just have to check are Joe McNally, John Keatley and Vincent Laforet. For people into nature photography, Moose Peterson is a must (however, he has also a lot of tutorials for all photogs, it’s so huge it got legendary). For people into more social attitude Chase Jarvis is probably a place of choice.

How?

I have tried many ways, RSS, email subscriptions, following in different sites and so on. A while ago, after writing my article 10 things I have about Google Reader I have developed a mix-method for staying updated with my favorite sites.

As it turned out, using RSS for websites updating very often, like Notcot, can be frustrating and overwhelming. I sometimes checked all as read just to remove the growing number of unread posts… Now I have bookmarked sites that update often and visit them manually. This way I can dedicate an evening to just check Fubiz or Notcouture and fall into that inspirational dream when you view more and more of beautiful videos and pictures and just can’t stop.

Photographers usually write less often, putting them in RSS reader is probably the easiest way to be up-to-date. There are some who write too much, like Scott Kelby for example, however, he is a writer really so we can’t blame him…

This leaves us with websites about web or social networking. I decided that the best place for them is… social networking! I followed them either on twitter or facebook and just keep up with their updates there.

Cataloging

To make your inspirational sources even more into the point I would recommend creating a separate place for them. In your browser, create a folder for inspirational bookmarks and organize them by type, for example: Photography, Design, Fashion. Then, inside each of them create a catalog Individual or Selected. This way you will separate websites you are visiting regularly from individual posts or pages you liked. You can do the same with RSS and twitter has a variety of tools for organizing as well. Take your time with this, you will thank me later;)

Have a great time finding your inspirations!