My father. He has been ill for much of my life but while he still could he would take photographs of family, friends and strangers, and deliver prints to them. His sole reason was to go out of his way to bring people joy, not just with the camera. He hasn’t been able to take photos for more than a decade. He is the reason that I enjoy photography and this community.
Thanks, some really interesting names have been listed. I am looking into to those, there’s a lot to find out…
Helmut Newton and/or Peter Lindbergh - you chose the one you like better. I honestly hope that both have influenced my work.
I’m a big fan of Dan Winters and his portraits. He commands his lights in interesting ways and often finds wonderful views of his subjects. His control and flagging of his key lights is always visually striking.
Steve McCury with his excellent ability to capture atmospheric moments and expressions only in the available light.
I really like his colorful underexposed style of photographing.
@s7habo, I’d never heard of this guy but those images really stopped me in my tracks. I went to his site to see more of his work, and his work is definitely worth studying. Thanks!
Ansel Adams. Yeah, I know…
Thing is, when I look back on my experiences making images, what inspires me today is rooted in what he did and wrote about:
- Subject: His renditions of the American West are one of the reasons I sought to live there.
- Composition: Large and compelling compositional objects are a scattered all over the landscape, so to speak, and he was a master of organizing them in the frame. In my early years I admired the color work of the Arizona Highways photographers; Adams was the black & white corollary.
- Technical: He very much advocated the understanding of the medium in order to effectively use it, which inspired a lot of my study in the day. I’ve recently enjoyed revisiting The Negative, his book on exposure and film development, and exploring the corollaries between film and digital imaging.
Even today, I’ll grayscale a digital image to explore what it might do in the context I learned studying Ansel Adams.
This is a great idea for a thread! There are many inspirations I could list. My dad got me into it as a kid, so that’s the first. In terms of classic photographers, I’ve always been very inspired by Sebastao Salgado:
Recently, Simon Baxter’s YouTube channel has been a HUGE inspiration.
I’ve also been hugely influenced by Ted Forbes over at The Art of Photography.
Many others too…
Very cool…turns out his name is Troy Paiva though! 
Wow, Steve McCurry’s work is amazing! I had not yet come across it. Thanks!
Speeling is not my strong suite 
I remember that photo well (doesn’t everyone?), but had never looked into who took it.
Ah! Yes, like @elGordo, I remember that image very well, but never looked into the photographer… Thanks!
Allan Sekula, a tremendously honest and hard working artist. Had the incredible proviledge of assisting him for a couple days.
From Dear Bill Gates
My dad got me interested in photography . He didn’t do loads of photos but he loved his cameras. He gad a darkroom … well not a darkroom just a blacked out space under the stairs of the terraced house we lived in. When he died a few years ago I scanned all his old negs brought back some good memories.
As for well known photographers . I don’t necessarily think any have inspired me. I like a streetie shot and maybe indirectly I admired Martin Parr over the years without necessarily knowing who he was.
Parr did a cracking shot of Burnden Park. The former home of my football team Bolton Wanderers 
. I could quite easily have been one of the people in the shot below
