Push yourself because no one else is going to do it for you

It's not like I'm bubbling with inspiration all the time. Sure, there's plenty of gorgeous scenery around where we live. I mean it's a regular fairytale like winter wonderland just outside our front door just now. But still, every now and then I feel the inspiration is lacking just a bit. 

I always get a bit cranky when I'm not doing something. Something with developing my photography skills I mean. There's just so much out there to discover and to learn. And there's just so many ways to get inspired (again), especially in the digital world we live in now.

If you're in that place right now, lacking in the inspiration department, go and check these out! I bet your inspiration will be flowing again after this post... 

1. Put 500px of FlickR under your Favs and check out work from fellow photographers
2. Catch up on your photography news by reading popular photoblogs like Lightroomkillertips from Scott Kelby.
3. Watch a movie (or the 'old' Topgear for that matter). Loads to learn from watching the graphics, composition and the use of light
4. Visit Youtube and watch tutorials from other photographers. I really like Phlearn and Serge Ramelli. They always give me lots of new ideas and you get to learn a lot from them
5. Join a photowalk or photoclub
6. Flick through your favourite magazine and study the images 
7. Go on a phototrip for a day in town nearby, take only one objective with you and start shooting and experimenting
8. Challenge yourself with learning new techniques
9. Listen to your favorite music and check out the album covers. I saw this cover of the Eels album Beautiful Freak.

I really like the way they did her eyes and wanted to give it a go myself. 

I started out with an image from Pixabay: 

I played around with Free Transform and the liquify filter to get this: 

 

It's just a start and by no means perfect, but just to give you an idea. You can ofcourse carry on forever and ever and learn new Photoshop techniques while your at it. What I discovered here is that using Puppet warp is the way to go. By experimenting and researching I found out that this is what one should be using to create the desired effect. 

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