Many a time I’ve been caught standing in the grocery store aisle just staring and an employee will stop and ask me if they can help me find something. I tell them I’m looking for inspiration and unfortunately it’s not easy to find.

We can be stuck as photographers in finding inspiration of where to go or what to photograph. I’m one of the lucky ones as there are so many places I want to go, and so many things I want to see. They don’t involve long road trips or even a plane ride and sometimes can even be found in my own garden. Also, I’ve been quite fortunate to be a member of both a hiking club and a bird club which has introduced me to many places in my surrounding area that are worthy of exploring at all times of the year.

So the places are there, the subjects are there, but what to do with them is where the need for finding inspiration comes in. Earlier I had spoken about intentional photography that instead of just grabbing your camera and heading out somewhere, have something in mind before you go. Create a photo project or chose a target subject you’re hoping to capture will help guide you on your outings.

There are many sources of other photographers that you study in order to get an idea of what your images could look like. Instagram is a great example of where you can go and begin to follow other photographers work. Many showcase their best work and you can begin to get an idea of composition and editing techniques.

Hashtags really do work and once you build a good photo stream of images that influence you, subconsciously they will begin to sink into your creative brain and you’ll start seeing the image possibilities while out photographing.

When I head to a new destination, Flickr is my friend. Another wonderful resource for ideas, compositions and even exposure settings. I’ll search under the destination name and get an idea of what types of images have been captured there. What vantage point and different perspectives. Many images hold their exposure settings metadata available for anyone who looks under the image information section. Also locations can be discovered, assuming the photographer was willing to share that information.

With the image above, it was an image captured in spring and I wanted to work with the Texture module with Topaz Studio. Amazingly, working with Topaz was far easier than working in Photoshop in adding a texture and many more editing options are available in Topaz Studio.

Below is the original image for your consideration.