Inspiration...photographers that move me.

You've seen this photo before. It's extremely famous. It is by Steve McCurry; Peshawar, Pakistan, 1984

He works for National Geographics. He is an amazing photographer. I have a few dream jobs I'd like to have as a photographer. Working for Sports Illustrated. And working for National Geographics. I don't think there are many photographers who wouldn't want to work for one if not both of those magazines. I love looking at his work to feel inspiration to travel and to capture photos of complete strangers that just move you.

Here is his blog.

Here is his website.

Another photographer that I was lucky enough to go to a seminar of his, that also works for National Geographics is Sam Abell. This photo, Pears in a windowsill, National Hotel, Moscow,(June 1986) is one of many of his famous works publish by National Geographics. What he is best known for is his ability to have more than one scene in a photo. He is able to capture more than one subject/story line in a photo. His composition abilities are amazing.

This photo is also another famous piece of work by him that shows his "two-view concept". The photo on the bottom showing what he is best known for. Two views of the annual branding and castration
Ken Rosman Ranch, Utica, Montana

It had been awhile since that seminar I had attended, but when I saw this photo recently, I remembered his composition abilities and was awestruck yet again. Not only for his abilities to tell a story by a photograph but his actual story telling. I could have sat there for hours looking at his work and listening to him. I was engulfed in this romantic photographer glow and my mind was filling with so much inspiration I could have burst.

While searching online for the pear photo, I found a website where Sam Abell is recalling his life and this photo and story moved me. It made me miss working in a dark room....because it is so true.Mother and Daddy, Flower Hospital, Sylvania, Ohio, 1975

I continued recuperating at home in Ohio. Things weren't good there. My mother was dying of emphasema, which she only referred to as asthma. She was the strongest person I've known, an esteemed teacher of Latin and French who imposed high standards on both her students and sons. She just wasn't stronger than Lucky Strikes.

I still have the hammered copper ashtray that I emptied every morning as a boy. In it were stubs of cigarettes with her lipstick stains on them.

My dad lived alone when Mother was in the hospital, and after she died in 1981 he didn't move or remarry. He wasn't unhappy living alone so one time in the darkroom - where you could say such things - I asked him "When was the happiest time of your life?" After a silence he said "When your Mother and I were courting."

And one last one that I couldn't help but share...go to the website and you will see what I mean by his story telling. Amazing.
My Dad and I,
International Center of Photography,
New York City, November, 1990
I suppose everyone has a moment in their lives they wish could 'stay'. This would be mine. I'm with my dad at an opening of my work at the International Center of Photography in Manhattan. My dad is the guest of honor. I've asked him to stand. The applause makes him emotional and to keep from crying myself I grip his shoulder, smile and look down. We are a long way from our tiny darkroom in Sylvania, Ohio.

The title "Stay This Moment" is drawn from a diary entry of Virginia Woolf written on New Year's eve 1932. She writes "If one does not lie back and sum up and say to the moment, this very moment, stay you are so fair, what will be one's gain, dying? No: stay this moment. No one ever says that enough."
But photographers say it when they make a heartfelt photograph, as this one by my friend David Alan Harvey proves.