The last thing you want to be accused of as any kind of creative is plagiarism. When your job comes down to delivering original ideas, ripping off others’ is pretty much a career ending practice.

But in photography originality is not a black and white concept. We can legitimately inherit inspiration from every picture we see. And it all has an accumulative effect leading to the creation of great work.

But where do you draw the line? Some people recreate photo concepts they’ve found on a stock library website, right down to the finest details, and call them their own. That’s one way of avoiding the license fee I guess, but misrepresenting the creative ideas of another as your own is an act of theft as plain as any other. And the internet improves the chances of such a plagiarist coming unstuck.

On the other hand, if we’re too sensitive about inspiration from work we’ve seen rubbing off on the work we’re creating, we’ll paint ourselves into a corner where there’s eventually nothing left to shoot.

That’s because we work in a discipline that’s been around since 1826 (earlier if you consider the influence of oil on canvas), so there’s hardly an idea that hasn’t been touched on by someone, somewhere, sometime before we thought of it. And so we walk a fine line where the test is in how much original value we can bring.

That’s the evolutionary nature of photography.