I love the work of Saul Leiter. Painter as well as photographer, he is a great example of someone who understood colour and composition. And timing.

He appears to create paintings in his photographs.

I find his work compelling.

I have more of an interest in street photography than I do landscape work. My own photobook collection at home is mostly filled with the work of street photographers. I enjoy getting lost in the work, and I am sure each time I sit down to study a book, I subconsciously learn a thing or two. I can’t see how you couldn’t.

I didn’t know about Saul Leiter until about a year ago. It spurred me on to collect a lot of his books, and then that interest in his work branched out to artists who are similar. I’ve enjoyed very much studying and absorbing myself in this new (to me) world of street photography.

I think there’s always the assumption that a landscape photographer will get his inspiration from other landscape photographers. That may have been true for me at the very beginning, but I found after a few years I was rarely looking at landscape images from other photographers. Instead, I have much enjoyed finding my own private universe of artists, musicians and photographers. Particularly ones that work in other realms to my own style of photography. There must be some kind of aesthetic overlap for them to inspire me and keep me company.

Ultimately, they offer me a form of personal inspirational identity.

It’s important to create your own inner world of inspiration. To build up a collection of artists, musicians, poets, photographers, whatever inspires us, to form our own private universe. It is something I believe that we should all possess, and if not, should at least try to cultivate.