Originality is messy
Added 2024-03-19 08:00:04 +0000 UTCSeveral years ago this series of images went around the world. Partly for their absurdity but hopefully mostly for their beauty and otherworldly nature.
Photographer Blake Little was photographing a naked man who was a real stereotypical gay bear of a man and decided to photograph him eating honey. That lead to Blake using 900 buckets of honey photographing everyone from an 18 month old child, to an 80-something year old, couples and even a dog, covered in honey. It is a stunning series.
But what happens when you have a beautifully executed original idea? People copy it. There is a fine line between inspiration and copying and even searching for the images for this series to write this post, I saw some mediocre copies.
I'm sure there are people that have seen my images of models dusted in powder and thought it was too similar to other images. Maybe it is. We are all products of experiences and memories and sometimes those memories subconsciously influence us. I hope I'm not blatantly ripping off imagery.
While I love the look of these images by Blake Little, I won't be emulating them both out of respect and because I don't have a studio where that would be possible.
What a behind the scenes video of this series here.
