Panji Indra discovered his passion for photography in 2000. He pursued his professional career soon after. His work revolves around fashion, beauty, food, and commercials. His images portray his natural, edgy, and effortless style.
He views photography as trends that "will keep revolving”.
His works are displayed in Amica, A+, Clara, Dewi, Elle, Harpers Bazaar, Her World, Marie Claire, WAD (France), and many more.
He currently resides in Jakarta. Panji Indra's hobbies include urban cycling, food, movies and music.
1. What is 'inspiration' to you?
In life, anything that makes me into a better person. In this industry, anything I can feel with my senses can ignite my creativity.
2. Tell us what you love most about your work.
The challenges, the deadlines, and those anxious moments before the photo shoot. And I get the chance to meet a lot of interesting new people to work with.
3. How do you get inspiration on your daily life / work?
I ride my bicycle from home to the studio, feel the rush and traffic, and enjoy the city at its best hour. I see a lot on the street that makes me grateful for what I am now.
4. How do you cultivate or encourage inspiration? How is inspiration important to your creativity?
I want to be inspired by life, by everything around us. I don't want to wait for inspiration to come to me. Sometimes I need to create it. I work in an industry that sells dreams, and imagination takes a great part of my creativity.
5. How do you see photography and inspiration?
I see them like this. I see photography as a tool to create beautiful images. Inspiration is the reason why you must make it look beautiful. Get inspired, and channel your creativity through photography. Nikon 1 has inspired me. I shoot more freely, and I see that every object has its own story, my version of story.
6. How can your work inspire others?
My works are mostly natural, technically simple, sometimes raw and candid. I just let my imagination run free. That's why I started shooting everything around me, things that I often ignored.
7. Who is your role model for inspiration?
Those around me always give the best inspirations in life.
8. Do you have any tips for the audience to get inspired in their daily lives?
If you want to be a photographer, don't be shy, and don't get limited by all the technical stuff. Just go out there, open your eyes and shoot everything! Make mistakes, then you'll learn something new.
Life is beautiful but not easy. Sometimes it's too beautiful, and I want to capture that moment forever but it's really difficult. Even though it was hard, I still did it. To achieve my goals, I just can't say “NO” or “but…”.
Life is challenging!!
Anything is possible, be optimistic, move on and simply make it as beautiful as you wish.
1. What is 'inspiration' to you?
Nature, Arts (Architecture, Painting etc.), some people, music and culture.
2. Tell us what you love most about your work.
It's creative, one of a kind, and hard to do. Plus, it's my imagination come true!
3. How do you get inspiration on your daily life / work?
Looking and staying with nice people and hearing good stories & music.
4. How do you cultivate or encourage inspiration? How is inspiration important to your creativity?
Inspiration is an energy that drives my creativity to come true. It's motivating me to make and do things that other people never do.
5. How do you see photography and inspiration?
PHOTOGRAPHY is the way I can capture the moment. I lock it in an image forever. Inspiration is my MOTIVATION.
6. How can your work inspire others?
Others may see my attempt and feel the difference. For the people who understand, they will know this is “one of a kind”.
7. Who is your role model for inspiration?
“The role model that never gives up for me is my King (King Bhumipol).
In Arts: Picasso, Mondrian. In Fashion: Coco Chanel, Christina Yu and P.Jae.
8. Do you have any tips for the audience to get inspired in their daily lives?
Look at the good side. See good things, memorize good stories and forgive. Be positive.
My name is Marini Ramlan. I work as a content developer for a media arm in Malaysia during the daytime and for the rest of my time, I am an artist.
My day job requires me to think about ideas on a daily basis. This can be quite challenging if you're required to come up with concepts consistently. I can't do this as I'm in the office all the time. I go out, I talk to people and I do art.
Art is who I am essentially. I've always been able to do the two things somehow and the balance between my job and my art has enabled me to create my own creative flow. When I do art, I'm the happiest, and when I am happy, I attract good energy and people to me; it's infectious. By doing so, I get to exchange ideas and thoughts that allow me to think better and inspire me at work and at life. So I always like to say to people, “Do what you love!” and find your “art”. It doesn't mean being able to paint. Your art is whatever thing that you're good at, that you find immense pleasure and joy for yourself. That “art” is going to make you do amazing things in your life. So always and forever, “Art for life”.
1. What is 'inspiration' to you?
Creativity is so important to me because it's what's going to separate you from the rest of them. One can be smart but what is being smart if you have no creativity to see outside of the usual circumstances? To be creative, one needs to also cultivate imagination. To be imaginative, one needs to be inspired.
Inspiration comes in all forms. It comes from a mere conversation with a stranger you meet at a party, the exchanging of ideas in the form of conversation or sight triggers new thought. I find inspiration in just about everything I see or do. I suppose that stems from being open and curious about things. More than anything, the act of discovery is inspiration for me.
2. Tell us what you love most about your work.
I work as a content developer for a media arm in Malaysia. I primarily develop content for local television as well as cross platform content campaign strategies. The business of conceptualizing content can be tricky and requires me to be creative in thinking all the time. To keep this going, I do a lot of art to stimulate my thinking as well as to keep my artistic side happy and inspired!
My day job doesn't dictate who I am as a person. I'm an artist at heart and have always found ways to ensure that side of me is kept alive. I try to paint whenever I can or even do creative collaborations with various brands to ensure this.
3. How do you get inspiration on your daily life / work?
I like observing things. So sometimes taking a walk in the park, driving through the city is also quite inspirational as there's so much pattern, texture and design to admire. I carry a notebook around with me and do sketches and doodles when I can. It's my visual diary that I thumb through everyday to keep me inspired. Photos give me ideas on projects that I would like to do.
4. How do you cultivate or encourage inspiration? How is inspiration important to your creativity?
Always be curious and wonder about things because life is ever inspiring!
A very easy way is to simply take a few moments, sit on a ledge as you sip your coffee and observe the way the world works. Observing human behavior is the best way to find inspiration for a movie treatment, TV series or art piece.
I like to talk to people too. I like asking them about their life or on their perspective about life, leading to a deeper understand of me as well as the human psyche.
However, as I'm a very visual person, doodling and taking pictures of things are things I love to get inspiration! I have an inspiration wall at work of things that I like. For example, this year I've specified that my board will be themed with “women”, “color”, “fashion” and “places”. I love it as it just makes me happy as I get to work, it feels like “home”. A bit of art at work is always good. People come by, stop to take pictures or even contribute to it. It triggers many good TV ideas too!
5. How do you see photography and inspiration?
What I see is expressed in my art. Color, pattern, texture are things I gravitate and respond to and I like to re-express what things mean to me through how I see. I like paying tribute to “normal” everyday things and giving them a new sense of identity through creating a new emotion with color and movement.
6. How can your work inspire others?
People always ask how I'm able to do both things at the same time (media and art), and to them I always say, “find time to do what you love” and for me that love is art. Art keeps me happy and focused. (Art for life)
I've always found time for art and I strongly believe it's the reason why I'm focused at my job too. I'm able to use my creative energy for both. A lot of artistic people find it hard to work in the corporate world because they find it creatively constricting whereas I find it full of unexplored possibilities.
7. Who is your role model for inspiration?
Some of the artists I draw inspiration from are Gustav Klimt & Alphonse Mucha. Klimt's for his mixing of pattern into human figures and Mucha for his women portraits in art the nouveau style. I am inspired a lot by street art because I love the idea of making art accessible to everyone on the streets. Titifreak, from Japan, whose giant fishes and portraits inspired me to see graffiti in a different light. However, it is the French artist Francoise Nelly, who has taken the idea of street art and adapted them into her own work using bright neon colors mixed by herself that has inspired me the most. She has created her own style of painting and technique, incorporating street art, fashion and fine art into her paintings which has made her cross into many markets quite seamlessly. I am inspired to explore and spread out my art style by their examples.
8. Do you have any tips for the audience to get inspired in their daily lives?
Find time to go for “inspirational walks”. I do it when I can. Take a few hours in a weekend with a sketch book or a camera and document things. I create themes in my head sometimes before going, for example, shapes in the city, or patterns in petals, or simply create a collage of pictures you capture using one prominent color. It might surprise you what comes out of your little projects.
Hello, I'm Jeremy Ley. And I AM a STORYTELLER.
By STORYTELLER I don't mean I sit around camp fires speaking of horror stories. Actually, I tell my stories through drawings. Professionally, I'm called an Illustrator or a Storyboard Artist.
Nikon has kindly given me their new Nikon 1, which I have to say is a fantastic camera. I haven't owned a proper camera before, but I'm surprised at how easy it is to use. Apart from shooting amazing photos, it also able to produce high-def videos at 1080p and slow motion videos at either 400 fps or 1200fps, which to all you non tech people means that it's really cool!
I thought I'd give you guys a quick tour of how I work, show you some of my drawings and also experiment with some photos.
1. What is 'inspiration' to you?
Inspiration is finding a new direction. It's not about realising that you've been going the wrong direction, but putting everything in context.
2. Tell us what you love most about your work.
Drawing is a way to create something from nothing. When I draw for my little cousins, I'm reminded of why I got into it in the first place. It's magic! No rabbits from the hat, or cards from the sleeve. This happens right in front of you. Pure magic!
3. How do you get inspiration on your daily life / work?
Well, it comes in all forms. Being 'connected', as most of us are nowadays, I would have to say... the internet. It really is a portal into the wider-narrower world. I say wider-narrower world because even though I could be finding out about something all the way in Iceland, it'll still be because of my decision to go there. Then, of course, I get daily inspiration from walking around and seeing things I haven't noticed before.
4. How do you cultivate or encourage inspiration? How is inspiration important to your creativity?
My deeper inspiration comes from watching movies, reading books, listening to lectures (iTunesU is fantastic!) and having long conversations with some of my friends. All these things are vital for my creativity as they set the overall path, where I'm going to be, in say, five,ten,fifty years down the track. Phew! I've got a long way to go (fingers crossed.)
5. How do you see photography and inspiration?
Photography is a new thing for me. I mean, everyone has access to a camera, either on their phones or their computer, but treating the camera as a 'creation-device' is definitely a new thing. It's made me rethink what's out there. I'm forced to see my normal world in a new light.
6. How can your work inspire others?
A few people have come up and said that I've inspired them to pursue drawing more seriously. That makes me feel very honoured and happy! In terms of my work, I'd love to develop my pieces so they propose a larger and stronger question. Who we are? What have we done? Why is that cat chasing a mailman around a spaceship? Those sorts of things.
7. Who is your role model for inspiration?
Rolf Harris. I owe that guy. He was the reason why I started drawing in the first place. On screen, he's as full of life as his drawings are. He draws, sings, performs, rhymes, and plays a wobbly board. Plus, he's even painted a portrait of the Queen of England!
8. Do you have any tips for the audience to get inspired in their daily lives?
Think of all the devices you use as 'portals' to inspiration. So, the internet, for example, would be a popular portal. It's a fantastic device. However, the more portals you have, the broader your knowledge. I recommend books, cinema, lectures, music, walking, friends, sports, arts, food, gardening, comics... you know, all the big ones. Oh, and don't forget photography!
DavidCow - a TV commercial and music video director.
David is terrible at expressing himself, but speaks volumes through images and art.
With formal arts training and a strong art history background, David focuses on expressing a consistent personal message on a given subject matter through different treatments at his disposal, from acrylic painting, poems, digital graphics, to comics, videos and 3D installations. He is passionate about topics relating to and symbolizing universal concerns and humanity at large, such as the status of the planet Earth, human love, ambitions, fears, genius, and limitations of the human heart and mind. He can never talk about them with words, but through art, these topics amazingly and powerfully drive him towards new mediums and perspectives.
David has taken a leaping step to be the “up-and-coming” moving-image director in the advertising and music video field in Hong Kong within these years. He's also in the stage performance multi-media category as well. His directing works are profound with worldwide clients like "Brand Hong Kong" which promotes Hong Kong as a dynamic, modern city featuring familiar faces like Chow Yun-Fat and Yundi Li. While some of the works are displayed all over the world, his station is broadened from Hong Kong to Mainland China and Thailand. They show different styles in sequential images in elegant, broad-view, or even surreal, comical and arty forms. He found directing as a way that can fully execute his desire of visual excitement.
1. What is 'inspiration' to you?
Raindrops from the sky.
2. Tell us what you love most about your work.
Directing moving images is like combining 7 different elements. Aside from art direction, there is also time, color, idea, pacing, acting and even sound. I like how shooting is complicated and it's like using light to paint. I like work that I can mix two or even more extreme concepts or visuals to form and deliver new concepts for humans.
3. How do you get inspiration on your daily life / work?
Thinking is one way. But thinking is not enough to fulfill all the desire of getting new ideas. So, feeling is important. Using eyes to feel, old ideas may become new thoughts with other treatments, like turning it upside down, compounding two individual things together or even crossing it over with imagination. It is the same as mixing color on canvas. No handmade colors are the same.
4. How do you cultivate or encourage inspiration? How is inspiration important to your creativity?
Inspiration frees the world from conformity and makes it more interesting. No one wants a boring life, but actually interesting things are all around us. Look and see nature and our world. So, observation and combination are keys to my creative inspiration. Using different or non-traditional ways to tell the same old thing is the starting point as well as the initial step to making brand new things.
5. How do you see photography and inspiration?
Photography is a diary/notebook/recorder for me to capture the details of the outer world that catches my eye.
6. How can your work inspire others?
When delivering a message, it is set to have different layers of understanding from the audience; some of the messages are deeply planted for humanity. They are mainly for subconscious understanding or broadening the visual field. So, when the audiences catch the message, they see the way I see the world. They would see the world differently and then it may give them inspiration.
7. Who is your role model for inspiration?
Michel Gondry
8. Do you have any tips for the audience to get inspired in their daily lives?
Feel and observe first. Digest from the heart and brain, and let the intuition and primal creativity drive the outcomes.
A passionate ambidextrous-painter/ gardener/ traveler. She now fulfills her dreams by spending half her time traveling all over the world and the other half working!
1. What is 'inspiration' to you?
"Inspiration" is a splendid gift from our hearts and universe.
2. Tell us what you love most about your work.
I love my painting job because of its flexibility. I can draw at any place, any time with just with a pack of coloured pens, paper, a camera as well as an internet connection.
3. How do you get inspiration on your daily life / work?
Truly be myself.
4. How do you cultivate or encourage inspiration? How is inspiration important to your creativity?
Listen to my heart and explore things that can make my heart beat faster and inspire my passion.
Inspiration is very important to me. It can reflect my passion and my life. Inspiration is just like breathing - you can't live without it.
5. How do you see photography and inspiration?
To me, 'photography' can help link up the precious moments of people and things, whereas 'inspiration' is the connection of the Muse and animus.
And the similarity is that we need to seize the moment for both 'photography' and 'inspiration'.
6. How can your work inspire others?
I'm not sure. People may be interested in or be inspired by my whimsical and illogical style.
7. Who is your role model for inspiration?
Ju Ming. He's a famous Taiwanese sculptor. I admire how he worked very hard and passed through challenges to pave his way from a woodcarver to a world-class sculptor.
His 'TaiChi' series is incredibly powerful and stunning! I also enjoy the humanity and rawness from his 'Living World' series very much.
8. Do you have any tips for the audience to get inspired in their daily lives?
Anything you can imagine is REAL!
Alice Wang graduated from the Royal College of Art, MA Design Interactions. With a background in BA Product Design from Central St. Martins, her work has been invited to participate in major international art and design events such as the Milan Furniture Fair – Salone Satellite, Beijing's Reshaping History, Today Art Museum, Design Museum Holon in Israel, Shanghai Art Museum, London Design Week and many more. She was also awarded the Conran Foundation Award in the year 2008, personally selected by Terrance Conran and Sebastian Conran as one of the most outstanding graduate of the year. Alice is now the director of a designer company in Taipei, Taiwan.
Alice Wang's work ranges from the Fast Typing Keyboard to White Lies weighing scales to Grass Scanners that tell you how green your front garden is, all illustrating the ironic and absurd habits and behaviours that lay deep among all of us. Alice uses design as a language to explore social issues and to observe and remind us about people's complex emotions. Through parody and irony, her works make people laugh and self-reflect.
1. What is 'inspiration' to you?
It sometimes makes you high, but sometimes lets you down.
2. Tell us what you love most about your work.
I love the fact that I never feel like I'm working.
3. How do you get inspiration on your daily life / work?
I read a lot of social science and psychology books and watch many documentaries.
4. How do you cultivate or encourage inspiration? How is inspiration important to your creativity?
I spend many weeks or months observing for a project, eventually sitting in a café for 8-10 hours to draw all my thoughts out.
5. How do you see photography and inspiration?
Photography plays an important role at the beginning and the end of every design process. It's a documentary tool when I do research, and it becomes a communication tool when a project is presented.
6. How can your work inspire others?
All my work aims to illustrate certain behaviours and social trends. I'm interested in questioning why people behave in particular ways and how these behaviours can evolve over time or in various situations.
These issues surround us all. Therefore, I hope it can trigger debates or discussions or even ideas for other projects.
7. Who is your role model for inspiration?
Dunne & Raby, Mathieu Lehanneur, Oliver Sacks, Richard Wiseman, Morgan Spurlock…and many more.
8. Do you have any tips for the audience to get inspired in their daily lives?
I'll have to borrow philosopher Henry Davis Thoreau's quote: “It's not what you look at that matters, it's what you see.”
My journey to the world of photography began long ago. For years I have been traveling widely, covering various social issues faced by the lesser known people, particularly in my country Bangladesh. Through my lens, I have told countless touching tales from the socially isolated groups, which has undoubtedly made me one of the most acclaimed photographers from Asia.
1. What is 'inspiration' to you?
People of my country are my inspiration. Thousands and thousands of people are even deprived of life's barest necessities. They are endlessly fighting and still manage to live each day with a smile on their face—this is my inspiration.
2. Tell us what you love most about your work.
It is traveling. My endless journey throughout the years has blessed me to meet enormous people of enormous cultures. I took all those little memories from known and unknown streets. Frankly, I am a navigator more than a traveler. Every day I discover a new region within my soul and thus I want to bring life to every image I take.
3. How do you get inspiration on your daily life / work?
What I find most amazing about the work I do is that it opens my eyes to all the little pleasures of life. There is great pleasure in meeting people who are despised by the world, in sharing a cup of tea with them, and discovering that they are still capable of affection, though they themselves go unloved. When I walk home, I have all the moments that I missed in my head, and they will become my source of inspiration in the days to come.
4. How do you cultivate or encourage inspiration? How is inspiration important to your creativity?
My land is a land of incredible human power. I have visited most countries in the world. Having these experiences, I can say nothing here can stop the will of people who are dying every day. People are happily fighting against all odds of life. Some people have nothing in life, but they smile and cherish every single moment. These people teach us to live life with will power. People suffer in many ways here but they do not complain.
A day laborer, who is working the whole night, sleeps in a basket to save and send money to his family. A woman who is bravely fighting for her children by cooking street food is inspiration for creation. Every photograph is a story of inspiration to live courageously to attain happiness through enthusiasm. Thus, I cultivate all moments of inspiration inside me to cultivate 'creativity' by inspiration.
5. How do you see photography and inspiration?
Photography has taken me to discover many unexpected territories. Thus, photography has taken me to nameless streets or on the top of a train. I cultivate inspiration from people who are living all around me. There was a 15 year old boy named Badsha (King), and he sells fishes in the city. In his village, he catches fishes early in the morning. Then, with these fishes he starts his journey to the city by going on top of the train to save transportation money. Throughout the whole journey, he sings songs and makes jokes. Badsha works the whole day, and risks his life on the train, but he was one of the happiest people in the community. I recall him as inspiration and bravery. Every photograph is a source of inspiration to me.
6. How can your work inspire others?
Our simple work may be the greatest inspiration to become a better human being each day. Photography can change the world for the better and find the way to love and peace. I see the beauty of people and the human soul in the pictures I take. Although the circumstances of some of the people I portray may be grim, back-breaking, or deprived, the people themselves are always remarkable characters and souls. My work represents inspiration from their incredible smile, their extraordinary ability to overcome difficulties and their flamboyant humanity. They inspire us to continually live another day with little more than just a fleeting smile.
7. Who is your role model for inspiration?
People who are fighting everyday to live life are heroes to me and these heroes represent colour. Their skin tones, dresses, and living places all are colourful and powerful. They are deprived from all happiness in life, but yet they are treating themselves with colour. While I am taking photos of these colourful souls, I am learning to live in colour. By capturing these colourful moments, I have learned that a few hints of red, blue and yellow have inspiration in our lives. People who are fighting without anything in this world are healing their pains by indulging in colour.
8. Do you have any tips for the audience to get inspired in their daily lives?
Life – a one way journey. We should not regret any moments that make us smile. We should make ourselves happy with all the little pleasure in life. Even if we have everything, we haven't had tomorrow. Do not take a single day for granted. Life is precious!
