As an amateur photographer who has been learning a lot over the years I’ve stumbled upon a lot of inspiration and resources to help me along the way. I always look to the greats, either classical photographers such as Ansel Adams or Alfred Steiglitz, or current big names to draw energy from and push myself to get out and shoot more.

David Duchemin

One of my early inspirations is David Duchemin and his Craft and Vision Ebooks. 

He’s a “humanitarian” photographer and author. I’ve bought a ton of his books, and when he started publishing them they were super cheap, $4 – $5 each. The price has gone up on some a bit, but they are well worth the read. The pictures are stunning and his easy to read and very conversational style make him super likeable!

My top 3 of his books are:

#1 A Beautiful Anarchy: When the Life Creative Becomes the Life Created- get it now for $9.99 on Kindle – it’s new and a hot read!

#2 Within the Frame: The Journey of Photographic Vision (Voices That Matter) – buy it now for about $25 on Kindle

#3 VisionMongers: Making a Life and a Living in Photography – an awesome book! on Kindle also!

Ian Shive

I am also super  inspired by Ian Shive.

He started his own stock photography site, Tandem Stills + Motion for outdoor and performance sports. Check out his website and if you are an performance sport photographer see if you can become a stock photo contributor. I contributed a few pics when his site was first up, but performance sport photography isn’t my gig!

Chase Jarvis

And another to die for photographer is Chase Jarvis. He’s got an amazing blog and pushes the boundaries with his give back to the photography community.

I love this that he published back in February this year:

Whether trying to break a creative block or sustain a creative flow, we have been searching for a secret on this topic for centuries…. I’ve given some talks on how I believe creativity is the new literacy and anything we can do to further creative forces – I’m all for it.

So, what are your inspirations? Who motivates you? Jimmy Chin? Ben Lowy? Art Wolfe? Jai Photo?