As photographers we are always on the lookout for inspiration and new ideas. Part of living a photographic life, to me, includes viewing a variety of photography online (portfolio websites, following photoblogs and discovering new ones as well as reading and interacting with various online photo ressources and photo communities). As much as I enjoy technology and the internet, I still also very much enjoy reading off-the-shelf photo magazines and photo books. In fact it is probably fair to say that I have an addiction to both photo magazines and photo books.

At some point my addiction to photo magazines got out of hand. My wife complained about magazine racks overflowing and spilling onto the floor where several stacks of photo magazines piled up over time. The piles of photo magazines on the floor made for great entertainment for our one year old daughter though, she had lots of fun spreading them all over the floor and tearing out pages to chew on!

This gave me an idea, although it wasn’t a very novel idea. Why not tear out the pages with interesting articles and inspirational images and keep them in a scrapbook and then throw  away all the junk pages? ‘Smart’ I thought, this would get rid of the piles of magazines on the floor, it would give me easy access to the articles and images I find interesting and I wouldn’t feel as if I was throwing away hundreds and hundreds of dollars worth of good photo magazines.

The concept of Inspiration Files was born.

Now, like I said, this is certainly not a novel idea. The idea of keeping printed materials of personal interest probably dates back to shortly after the invention of printing! However, how many of us actually get around to doing it? Surely I am not the only person in the world who tends to procrastinate the slightly more laborious and tedious tasks?! The main problem, of course,  was that I had put off organising my magazines for years, so the task had become huge. I must have had hundreds of magazines to go through and it took me several evenings to get it all sorted, organised and done!

However as with anything you have put off for a long time, it was a great feeling when it was all done. I ended up with 10 Inspiration Files, each containing 80 pages which means I currently have 800 pages of photographic inspiration I can go to whenever I need a creative kick.

If you aren’t already scrapbooking or creating your own Inspiration Files I encourage you to start today. If you have a lot of magazines lying around, go through them now, tear out the pages that interest you and organise them into files. I simply use affordable, spiral back portfolios with 40 plastic sleeves per folder which are available from my local stationers.

Once you have your initial stack(s) of magazines are out of the way it is simply a matter of keeping it up on an ongoing basis. Once you you finish a magazine, make it a habit to tear out the articles and images that inspire you and put them into your Inspiration File. If you are really organised you can even flag these articles and images when you read the magazine.

Over time you will have a bunch of files packed with great articles (since they are hand picked by yourself) which will serve as a great source of photographic inspiration for many years.

You probably already have one or several photo magazines that you read, but if you need some inspiration here is a list of magazines that I either buy off-the-shelf on a regualr basis or subscribe to:

Outdoor Photographer
Photo District News (PDN)
American Photo
B&W: Black & White Magazine
Photo Techniques
Lenswork
Photo District News
Practical Photography
Photofile
Better Photoshop Techniques
Better Photography (Australia)

I told you I was addicted to photo magazines!

Have fun creating your own Inspiration Files.

If you liked this article, you may also like these:

• Vision Is Better. Free the Mind, Free the Camera.
• Great Discounts on Photo Magazines within the U.S.
• Photo Critique No. 7 – “Stop to Admire the Grass”