Many photographers glean inspiration from art, fashion magazines, and everyday life around them.  My go-to for insta-inspiration?

The Pottery Barn catalog.

“Wait a minute, you’re a portrait photographer, and there are never people in the Pottery Barn catalog.”  Exactly.  That’s the brilliance of it.  If they showed people in the catalog, it would look like it was someone else’s home.  Instead, they stage it so that every photo looks like someone is about to walk in.  And maybe that someone will be you…

They have created a world that is both lived-in and dreamy.  The blankets are not neatly folded, there’s one draped over an armchair.  On a cream-colored couch.  Next to a large window.  With a fire going.  Just waiting for you to curl up with a book and to pull that warm blanket over you.   Everything about the scene is real, it makes it feel that it is within your grasp.  Yet it rises above the every day, and gives you something to aspire to.

That is what I try do do with my photographs.  Create images that are real, capture the person’s expressions and gestures as they make them.  Only adding a spark, a new perspective, taking it up one level.  Creating something worth hanging on your wall as art.  Real, tangible, but beautiful.

Whenever the catalog comes in the mail, I flip through it like a master poker player shuffles cards.  Trying to devour the whole thing while savoring it too.  Then I usually march into my husband’s office, thrust it at him, and inform him that we NEED the ENTIRE Chesapeake collection, and a house on a lake to go with it.  He always says “Okay.  We’ll get there.”  And I know we will.

In the meantime, my dreams are filled with French doors, rich linens, and iron candle holders.  And that blanket by the fireplace.