Looking for Inspiration

As you may know, one of my passions and definitely my favourite creative outlet is photography.  I've always toyed with the idea of getting a bit more serious about photography and attempting to do it for dolla-dolla-bills-yo but have always hesitated to really jump in feet first.  There are a number of reasons for this: my skills aren't quite where I want them to be yet. I don't have the backup equipment to render my services accident proof.  I'm a bit scared of negative criticism. But I also worry about taking the fun out of it.

What's really great is that with my new-ish job I get to do a lot of the in house photography.  I do events, I do stock photos, pictures of the exhibitions...most of the website is made up of images that I shot.  But last night with the opening of Searching for Tom I felt a lack of inspiration.  I still got the images I needed and some shots I really liked.  But it was the first time that photography felt like a job. It kinda scared me.

Time for my usual counterargument: It was a pretty crazy week of work and yesterday was particularly stressful with me not even getting an instant to think about photographing that night until the moment I pulled out my camera to check my cards were dumped right as people started to congregate for the event.  I usually like to give myself an hour before a shoot begins to mentally prepare. Get in the photography frame of mind. Yesterday did not lend itself to that luxury. I was tired. Everyone was tired, stressed. It was a workman like event...not my usual way of shooting. Also, I've now shot in the atrium at work so many times, it's sometimes hard to get creative when you become very familiar with the space. So, it probably was a bit of an aberration. That's what I've concluded.

But as I look through my images from the past few months, I can't help but notice that most of them are related somehow to work. Which in some ways is great as I get to do something I love as part of my every day job. But it also saddens me to see that I'm not shooting as much just for me. There's been a "forced" quality to my stuff for the past few months. You can tell by my lack of posting on Flickr.

So as the title says, I'm looking for a little inspiration. A new certain something to get me back shooting for pleasure again. New places and spaces usually inspire me, so maybe I just need to explore a bit. What I really need is a proper vacation, but that's a whole other post.

Anyway, let me know if you have any ideas!