homeFluidphotos is a sounding board for ideas to provide inspiration for anyone who enjoys exploring digital photography and digital image creation. These pages aim to bring you a series of starting points, triggers for new ideas, tools for lateral thinking and a set of resources designed to send your mind off on a sideways wander.
We are not about to presume that we can tell you how to take great photographs, and we are sorry that we have no colour-by-numbers instructions for dummies. Actually, we don't believe in dummies. What we can strive for is to offer some humble advice from those of us that spend a great deal of time working with cameras, digital imaging software and colour printing.
This space is for opinions to be shared in a way that melts creative block faster than, er, chocolate ice-cream on a warm spoon? Modest aspirations!
Fluidphotos is a public space, a virtual notice board for sharing the tatty beginnings of ideas on the backs of envelopes. It recognises that truly innovative thinking can be triggered by the simplest tiniest detail. The resources here are diverse in the degree to which they have been developed and the degree to which they may be considered relevant to digital imagery. What makes fluidphotos fluid and what makes it work is those sparkles of generosity in the contributors, each of which has the potential to inspire a myriad of great ideas.
The shoebox concept comes from the real thing, except without any shoes in! Shoeboxes always seem to get used to store little collections of memorabilia. Photographs, toys, stones, shells, Monopoly money, pictures cut out from magazines...all sorts. They are used to hold bizarre, emotionally charged objects. You open a shoebox and browse, knowing that you will trigger strong memories leading you on a momentary journey. This is why we use the phrase "browsabilia".
Those of you that have seen the film Amèlie will recognise an equivalent to the shoebox metaphor in the form of the little metal tin that Amèlie finds behind a tile in her bathroom and then reunites with its owner. The shoeboxes here cannot be as powerful to anyone other than their author but we hope that they will be able to take you on a little journey of some sort and sow the seed for inspiration.