Hasta La Ideas

We asked Vancouver-based Scott Pommier which photographers or eras he looks to for inspiration.
I feel like I’ve picked up little lessons, or perhaps truisms is closer to the mark, from a lot of photographers. I’ve never studied the history of photography. I only really know what I’ve tripped across.

A few years ago, I was at a friend’s place and he had a beautiful book of photographs by Deirdre O’Callaghan called “Hide That Can,” about a hostel in London. Looking through it, I realized that although I had a pretty good understanding of the mechanics of photography, I wasn’t really attuned to the subtleties. Looking back, that was a turning point in a couple of different ways.

For a start, I decided I wanted to get a lot more comfortable shooting available light photographs. And also, I don’t think I’d really thought about journalism as art until that point. I was already a senior photographer for an international skateboarding magazine before I started to figure out how I wanted to shoot pictures and even before my pictures began to mean anything to me. It wasn’t until then that I actually felt like a photographer. This is all actually pretty recent. I wanted so badly to be a child prodigy, but I think I’m a late-bloomer.

There’s a full interview with Scott Pommier on the Feature Shoot website.

See another photo after the jump.