The Posts?
    So now you know a little about why I am starting this, but what will it look like?  What should you expect to see here from week to week?  For the most part, it will look just like my offline idea notebook.  There may simply be 3 words meant to inspire future ideas ("red angular hair") or it may be a full brief for a complete fashion story.  From time to time, I will try to include sketches, either scanned or drawn in photoshop but never drawn very well.  Lighting diagrams to experiment with, avant-garde makeup ideas, and I've been thinking a lot about video lately so who knows where that will go.  Then from time to time I will include links to fashion editorials, photography articles, films, lighting techniques and anything else that inspires me.  Expect quick brainstorms, half baked ideas, and scribbles masquerading as diagrams.  This will be an unfiltered pile of virtual paper napkins and notebook pages.  Just as I would jot them down offline  without being prettied up.


So What Do I Mean by Open Source?
    Open Source is a term often used for software source code (or hardware specs) that are made available publicly under various licenses but usually meant to encourage others to add to the code and allows public use for free (its a touch more complicated then that but if I go further, the IP lawyer in me will take over and bore you all).  How can that possibly apply here?  Ideas are just a piece of the giant photography puzzle.  If I can put my ideas out there, others can build upon them, thats what an Open Source Photo Shoot is.  
    And I am a huge believer in the Photography 2.0 quasi-movement.  Some reading this may be sick of all this "Photography 2.0" / "Web 2.0" talk but for the rest of you, here's a quick run down.  Web 2.0 is the offhand description for the growth of social networks, crowdsourcing, and other people empowering internet applications.  Photography 2.0 plays on this idea, specifically how the web 2.0 world has democratized photography.  It's a belief in spreading photography knowledge instead of keeping it as a trade secret.  Of communicating and sharing the love of photography with others both online and offline.  A rising (digital) tide raises all boats, and all that.  (Ok, so all of this is kinda my own defintion, but lets just say I got it right)  There are sites out there to learn lighting, understand the business of photography, and get an editor's perspective, among a large number of other things.  So I thought, what is missing?  What isn't being shared?  After almost no research or verification that this is true, I decided there isn't any blog out there sharing the raw output of an idea journal, the creative brainstorm process.  My piece of this giant open source project, which is how I see the photography 2.0 movement.


So Can I Steal Your Ideas?
    You mean use them, right? Well, 1) noone can copyright ideas (again, a bit more complicated than that, but basically, yeah, believe me thats right), so I can't keep you from them; and 2) Uh, did you read the rest of this blog?  That's kinda the point.  
    But I would like to see how this site influences you and what results it leads to.  If you use an idea from Open Source Photo Shoot or if something here inspires you, let me know and let others know.  This is the spirit of open source.  

• If it is a significant idea you have used, it would be great to give credit to OSPS.  Write about it in your blog, list us in the contributors to the photo, tell your friend, colleagues and clients about OSPS.
• OSPS would love to have you as a guest blogger to discuss how the ideas inspired what you created.
• Send us your ideas and we will post some of the best on OSPS.