Inspired by...

I'm Listening - haptree

The Folksy team have recently created a series of posts called 'Inspired by...' and they have invited all of us, wherever you come from to write a post to celebrate the special people in our lives who have inspired us to be who we are, take a few chances and get on with our careers and creative lives.

I know now from raising my own children how important it is to support ideas and be enthusiastic about the slightest achievements. It's not just about paying for something, it's about listening and being interested, asking questions and getting someone motivated and inspired to do more - letting people know that nothing is unachievable and giving them the help needed to try and get there.  My mother is exceptionally well read and extremely intelligent, she studied law at UCL and her general knowledge puts me to shame.  However, she has pretty much devoted her life to raising her children rather than any grand career ambitions, and single handedly too.

When I was about 6 or 7 I was allowed to play with my grandmothers camera - it wasn't used much as far as I remember (she had died a few years before) and occasionally there was even a film in it, just flicking on the winder was exciting enough.  A particular favourite was to try and get pictures of anything in mid air - anything at all, my brother jumping off gateposts was excellent but mostly it was soft toys flung high - a little like clay pidgeon shooting, 20 shots of the sky and then maybe 4 of an indistinguishable blurred object at some distance - my mother got them developed. I look back and think, wow - she must have known they'd be mostly rubbish, but she knew how much it meant to me to see the photos. She then bought me a little 35mm compact halina camera for my birthday (I think 8th), which my brother smashed with a rock at a lake (by mistake) - so she bought me another one and a book on how to take great photos, then an SLR, then money towards a darkroom and more books to help me improve...

I think I'm lucky to have been been raised by someone who could see the beauty of that thrill of creating something as well as learning and researching as much as you can to find out how to be better at it -  I hope I can encourage my kids to feel the same way - I'm doing ok I think as my seven year old will already reach for the chambers dictionary to look something up!

I still have a passion for trying to stop motion as you can see in a recent trip to the zoo above where I asked my other half to fling our daughter through the air in the interest of a great shot! Even my final piece for my degree (architecture BA) was based around the idea that a photographer had captured a moment in time of giant cube smashing through a concrete building - the resultant destruction forming the house, yep really... sounds ridiculous now, think I'll leave it there!

Oh and remember if you write your own inspired by piece to add it to the comments on the folksy blog post - Collective Inspiration or to the Folksy facebook page - anyone's welcome to join in :)

Thanks for reading :)

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