09/01/12

What inspires you to get up each day to enjoy life?

Copyright Ashford Daly Photography_Fine Art Photographic Print RIDE London 2_blog_post

Ride – Carousel, merry-go-round, fun fair ride, horses, abstract, colour, London South Bank, Waterloo – Print Dimensions: 36 x 16 inches – LIMITED EDITION PRINT CODE: LON24

Greg and I both have quite different inspirations which motivate us daily, monthly and annually each time we look at our goals and objectives, achievements, and personal planning options at the start of every year. This changes and flexes too throughout every year, and can be influenced by people we meet, cultures and countries we visit, our families, our friends, our work/life, our hopes and dreams too. It doesn’t stop nor are our inspirations set in stone or immovable.

Whilst they are individual to each of us, they also jointly tie into our partnership personally as a romantically linked couple, engaged and very much in love, (all together now ahhhhh…), and also professionally, to help us creatively and to become better business peeps.

Personal

Books – specifically a good photo book for both Greg and myself, reaches our motivation and visual glands, as well as being great reference material and ideas generators.

Food – Mary and I are both half Irish – (with Mary’s looks and my surname, couldn’t you guess!) – we both love good food and entertaining company – thankfully Mary loves to find great ingredients, has a forest load of cookbooks, experiments and I’m the lucky guy whom gets to taste the goods… ahemmmm!

Life – people, places, interests, friends, love, fun and happiness – a lot to ask for – a lot to fit in – a lot of inspiration surrounds us throughout our networks and in our world and we are thankful for that, simple!

Travel – we both adore to just set off or jet off to explore and ferret out new countries, cultures and exciting new events – what an experience – we have a list of places – well two lists actually – near and far – new places, special places, romantic places, stunning places, bewitching places, our places…

Each other – corny – no – we love sharing every single day and adventure as ‘us’ – we don’t know what each day will bring – could be good, bad, OMG a-m-a-z-ing or indifferent – we aim though to make each day count, to make each day GREAT, to make each day different, but above all else, to make each day our day, our choices, ours, nobody else’s, ours to realise our hopes and dreams, thoughts and ideas, inspired and motivated through the people, places and environments we both find ourselves occupying.

Business

Creative Juices – we strive to be creative, and we aim to constantly improve too, we like to experiment and hone our style, and we want to create the next best photograph we can – artful weddings, people socially, street photography, breath-taking scapes, living creatures, animated abstracts, bold boudoir, all themes, all reasons, all inspiring to our creative eyes – a true motivator for us each day.

Great service – we pride ourselves on great customer service, delivering great photography, fabulous display products, having the attention to detail, being personable, with the right client base who appreciate the time, energy and effort for the ready investments they make. You ain’t cheap – no thankfully we’re not ‘cheap’ nor are we the most expensive either, but you do, as they say, definitely get what you pay for and our testimonials vouch for that. See some of them at the bottom of our website scrolling through - cute little feature that eh!

Skill – we never stand still, nor do we assume there’s nothing more to learn – education evolves, techniques develop, we are hungry for knowledge, we want to understand more, learn more and then practise said skills to make some stunning photographs, nay amazing images and brilliant finished artwork to enrich our portfolio and your displayed pleasure, and for everyone to understand it’s taken high skill to achieve what they see over time, and a trained eye to recognise what was there in the first place, to warrant actually pressing that camera shutter, that time.

Reward – no photographer does this job just for the love of it – really? – shock, gasp! There should be no doubt that we’re all in it to offer services and products in return and exchange for our pay rewards – this enables us to stay passionate about our livelihood and our profession. Of course if we win big the next National Lottery Rollover we might take a review and recap on this point. We’ll let you know…

Dream Enquiries – for us this is a biggie – we always hope and wonder if ‘the enquiry of that year’ will be sat waiting that next morning in our email inbox – you know the type of enquiry we’re referring to – the one you’ve always hoped and dreamed about all of your life, if not today or tomorrow, then when? We of course do all we can to facilitate the inspired enquiries, to help our hopes and dreams actually turn into reality – whether it’s photographing with seven of the current Top 10 Wedding Photographers in the world today – ok we did do that during last year, so we’ve now moved on to our next Dream Enquiry – what that is – well you’ll have to wait and see if we can achieve it…

Space to grow – in business we all need space to grow, to take inspiration and remodel it to suit us and our offerings. All work and no play makes for a very stagnant photography business. Bit like Mary with her ingredients and cook books… she loves to experiment and then everyone gets to enjoy – delicious…

Achievements – yes we all like and desire a bit of recognition and a pat on the back every now and then – you’ve got to be in it to win it as they say – so go on we urge you, get out there, find a few competitions to enter and fingers crossed you too will receive – if nothing else you should be able to gain an insight into the world of photography awards critiquing, image scoring and what it all boils down to… you’ve nothing to lose, and maybe an immense amount to gain – we do talk from experience by the way!

Networking – running your own business, even as a close knit team, can be quite lonely an experience from time to time – we look to promote our business with others by way of personal introductions and referrals, as well as supporting and networking with fellow industry players and peers – we’re all striving to achieve the same, to make an honest living whilst having fun and preparing for our futures – why not make the call today and create your own personal networking circles – which by the way could change and become a hexagon from time to time, but just do it… you might be pleasantly surprised what tips up in your inbox by doing so!

Why bother?

By finding points to inspire you daily and within your existing life, you will be motivated – being motivated creates actions – by completing actions and goals, creates happiness and fulfilment, which in turn builds and shows achievements and reward, and may lead to new horizons or bigger pastures you never thought possible or attainable… that’s what inspires us to get up each day to enjoy life!

Now where did we put this year’s diary – just received an email enquiry…

Image credit:

Cropped photographic fine art image by AshfordDaly titled RIDE from the London Scapes Limited Edition Collection and now available to purchase full size in fine art print format here by clicking on this link to our Fine Art section on the website or by following this locator link: http://www.ashforddalyphotography.com/fine-art/the-collections/scapes/the-london-collection/ride/