Using Photos 4 Story Ideas

 

If you’re hunting for book ideas, stock photos hold super ideas.  

 This is one of my own photos, BTW. I can just look at a photo and spin a story around it. I think I'll lighten it. Photoshop Elements has been a great addition to my writing tools.

In my mind's eye, I remember/see this old wooden windmill on a Kansas drive. Those blades were shot and missing, but I wondered who had lived there, and their stories.

Or I saw an Amish girl riding her little pony, alongside the country road. Her skirts had blown aside, exposing her jeans and boots beneath. I did get a book out of that one.

Deviant Art is a super idea shopping place, great artists. Spend some time there.

Two of the artists I’m currently fond of are Olly2 and Conrado at Bigstockphoto.com If you like the photo and graphic work of special individuals there, search: Contributor:Olly2 or Contributor:Conrado

I don’t know why I love you, Grunge Background, but I do.

Here are some super artists/designer premades:

• Ravven : I love her blue steampunk girl. Not a clue on how to write steampunk, though I love it. She’s a gamer. Easy to see how her work would include her hobby. 
•   Najlagamberdesigns:I bought one of these. Naj is easy to work with. 
• The Book Cover Designer 
• Selfpubbookcovers 
• TheBookCoverMachine 
• EbookIndieCovers:    This one has a selection of premades across the board. 
• CoverDesignStudio These are edgy/moody.

Editor and graphic artist Jenny Quinn at HistoricalEditorial.com does super work. And she’s likely to know the perfect period costume, too.

So those are a few of my haunts. I also take a lot of my own photos and get ideas from them. It’s that old Audio or Visual Person Thing.

I hope you enjoy the tour and come up with lots of story ideas. If you do, create a story toy box like I did, always at the ready when you're story hunting.

For that story box, I use PageFour on a PC and NoteSuite on a Mac. Any words that create a story, i.e. Homecoming are stashed in there, with a Good Title list, plus any particular characters I'm using in a particular story. When writing for 2 publishers, I had to sometimes come up with stories quickly and there was my Toy Box. :)

I'm adding another drawer to that Toy Box and that is the links/URLs to stock photos that churn stories for me.