Starting images

[Big Bully]

Is there a single picture that made you want to get into photography?
I know that this image (I finally found it!) by Michael Kenna is the picture that made me want to get into photography.

It is the picture of the swings.


Also found on this website... http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://images.artnet.com/artwork_images_119642_324291_resize_michael-kenna.asp%3Fwidth%3D130%26maxheight%3D130&imgrefurl=http://www.artnet.com/Artists/ArtistHomePage.aspx%3Fartist_id%3D9395%26page_tab%3DArtworks_for_sale&h=83&w=130&sz=10&hl=en&start=3&um=1&tbnid=_-aGIMo45vFUDM:&tbnh=58&tbnw=91&prev=/images%3Fq%3DMichael%2BKenna%2Bcatskill%2Bmountains%26svnum%3D100%26um%3D1%26hl%3Den%26safe%3Doff%26rlz%3D1T4GGIH_enUS238US238%26sa%3DN

 

[Aquarium Dreams]

No particular image, but urban exploration photography in general was influential early on.

 

[Aquarium Dreams]

That swing picture is just hauntingly beautiful, by the way. I can see why it inspired you!

 

[celler]

Same here Aquarium Dreams! I would say that awesome pictures of abandon asylums re-sparked my interest in photography. I guess what first interested me was living on Oahu and wanting some decent pictures.

 

[Big Bully]

I know, isn't that swing cool! Haunting.. That is a good word for that picture. I like it.

I think it would be awesome to do some abandoned industrial pics, but here in Idaho, we don't have many abandoned buildings, that I know of.

 

[leaving0hio]

That picture is beautiful. "Haunting" describes it well.

For me it's just been pictures I've seen on forums like this - not really one picture in particular.

 

[Big Bully]

Art in general moves me. I am a painter also, and I love finding things that take my breath away, just like this picture.

 

[usayit]

The one moment that got me into photography was when my mother got the family vacation photos back. I got bored at one point and started snapping photos with my fathers SLR. The photos didn't have any family members in it (which my mom thought was a must have).. just some photos of the area. I expected my Mom to push them aside and not take notice. Instead, she looked at it.. and said.. how beautiful it was and that it reminded her of some really nice postcards she kept over the years.

That was more than 20 years ago... I asked her about it and she doesn't remember. I can't seem to find the photo.. oh well... the memory is probably better than the actual photo anyways.

 

[Alex_B]

Is there a single picture that made you want to get into photography?

well, i guess my first own images .. nothing spectacular, but done by me .. and at a very young age (7-ish i'd guess). so i thought this very fascinating at that time.

 

[closea]

Everything by John Moran inspires me, he's an amazing Florida nature photographer. He's a photojournalist by trade, and having met him, his eloquence when speaking of the beauty of the marriage between nature and photography is really something else.

 

[Big Bully]

The one moment that got me into photography was when my mother got the family vacation photos back. I got bored at one point and started snapping photos with my fathers SLR. The photos didn't have any family members in it (which my mom thought was a must have).. just some photos of the area. I expected my Mom to push them aside and not take notice. Instead, she looked at it.. and said.. how beautiful it was and that it reminded her of some really nice postcards she kept over the years.

That was more than 20 years ago... I asked her about it and she doesn't remember. I can't seem to find the photo.. oh well... the memory is probably better than the actual photo anyways.

Of course your mom wouldn't remember, it wasn't significant to her. But you remember it because it was "life altering" for you.

 

[abraxas]

That would do it.

Here's a little better link;

http://www.artnet.com/artwork/42518...enna-swings-catskills-mountains-new-york.html

 

[Big Bully]

That would do it.

Here's a little better link;

http://www.artnet.com/artwork/42518...enna-swings-catskills-mountains-new-york.html

Thanks! :mrgreen:

 

[Rick Waldroup]

Robert Frank.

I was 14 years old wandering around town with my new camera that I saved up and bought by mowing lawns all summer. I was shooting whatever I came across, not really knowing exactly what I was doing.

I would shoot the old movie theatre downtown, I shot my mailman, I shot train tracks, I shot my dad at work, stuff like that. I never was too much interested in nature or things like that, although my mom sure wanted me to shoot those kind of images.

Then one day, I showed an art teacher some of my photos, and the next day she handed my a book by Robert Frank. It was The Americans, and the moment I opened it, I knew exactly what kind of photography I wanted to do.

Thank you Mrs. Bowers. You are long gone, but not forgotten.

 

[TheOtherBob]

I was 15, on a school trip, and took a snapshot of the Washington Monument from the base - it was washed out by the greyness of the day and the $15 dollar camera I was using, but the (accidental) effect looked like a perfect road dissolving slowly into the clouds...it was the best picture I had ever taken, so I kept it.

Skip forward 12 years, and I needed to decorate my office - I still liked that photo, so I had it enlarged -- and started thinking that it'd be fun to do that again. I had always enjoyed taking pictures, but at 15 I was just pointing and shooting, without understanding - so I wanted to understand how to, you know, do it right "on purpose."

Not really life changing, and it's hard to say that I was "inspired" by something my 15-year-old self did by accident while waiting in line, but nonetheless that image is what started this expensive, obsessive little habit.