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Mood Boards and Inspiration

Inspiration can come from anywhere, an image on social media, a beautiful sunrise, a scene on a street. When the time comes to photograph it, you need to communicate your inspiration to others. A mood board is a great way to capture the mood or feeling of a shoot, or a particular image.

The Mood Board itself consists of a collage of objects, nowadays almost always pictures, showing colour and specific detail. For a shoot there may be a reference image, a picture of the type of model(s), clothes, lipstick shade, eye makeup design, hair style, and a colour pallet. In the good old days, a mood board would have swatches of cloth, makeup samples, hair samples, and Polaroids. You can still do this and share photographs of the results.

How do You Make a Mood Board?

There are so many ways – you can try the traditional route, paper, scissors and glue. Pinterest is an obvious choice, just remember that not every image is on Pinterest, but there are lots. Browsing any social media will let you capture lots of images. Take in a web site for a museum or gallery – the world is full of beautiful images.

After you have lots of images, the idea is to find the few that capture the spirit of your inspiration. These images can be made into a collage, and then shared on social media to attract collaborators, or with your artistic team to help share the vision.

What about “Single Image Inspirations?”

A single image is a great starting point, but don’t be seduced into recreating it – that’s copying, not inspiration. There is nothing wrong with an homage or tribute, just put your own twist on the image, make it yours, not theirs.