When you're making photos out in the landscape, do you stop for a moment, and watch? In particular, do you pay particular attention to the speed of moving clouds? I do.

Sometimes participants on workshops ask me 'how long should I make the exposure for?' when they want to get blur in their photos. I think the answer can be found without asking me. You just need to look at the clouds and watch them as they drift across the sky, and while you're doing that, count the seconds it takes for them to move. It's really as simple as that. Only a lot of us aren't looking. We're not watching. We just fire the camera and wait to see what pops up on the screen.

But I love to anticipate. To study. To get to know the movement of clouds, waves, even the vibration of the trees due to a light wind. I'm a studier of movement in the landscape.

Particularly where long exposures are concerned. If it's a windy day, then I'm all excited as I know 20 or 30 seconds is an eternity and I'll get long streaks like the ones you see in my Harris photo above. If it's a calm day, then I know there's almost little to no movement and most probably - no point in using a long exposure.

But I still stand and watch, and wait, and watch some more. Just to make sure.

We all have our own path. But I think it takes us a long time to find it. If we are ever lucky enough to do so.

I don't tend to look at a photography sites as my sole source of inspiration. Instead, I get my inspiration from all around me - music, books, art, life experiences, things that happen to me, life.

I think that we are basically sponges. We soak up our experiences and they all combine to make us who we are.

Tonight I’m listening to someone I’ve been a huge fan of for the past twenty years. Laurie Anderson may not be to everyone’s taste, and that in itself I think, says something. Her music has often allowed me to think outside the box. To embrace the idea that there should be no boundaries, and that being an individual is a good thing. No, it’s a great thing.

My musical tastes are quite broad, and I think that all of the artists I love, give me something and have also taught me a thing or two about being creative. Each artist I love is good at what they do, because they have found their own voice. They are leaders, not followers.

To be you, you have to find yourself in all the noise out there. That can be hard because I think we're never too sure where we end and where external trends or forces begin. To be true to who you are requires you to ignore what everyone else is doing. We're not into creating work for the sake of following what everyone else is doing, but in order to follow who we are.

Being creative is about being yourself.

And this requires us to be comfortable to fail. Failure is good, because in order to experiment and find your own voice, we have to try things out that we don't know if they will work or not. If we went with what we did know works, then we're just following what the majority are doing. Having no fear to experiment is a vital attribute to have, if you are to progress at what you do.

When I listen to unique or distinctive musical artists out there, I don’t hear a need to conform or go with what is 'in'. They are following themselves. That’s why I love artists like Laurie Anderson. She has been labeled 'alternative', but this just means that she’s following her own path. And that’s what we should all be doing.