Looking for inspiration? Check out
Blend Images The Blog! at blog.blendimages.com for amazing photos, illustration, graphics and fine art.
For a little over a year the stock photo production company has been regularly showing small collections of the work of amazing visual artists. The works are not limited to photography, but include, illustration, painting, collage, architecture, music, video and more.
Jasmine Hartsook, Blend's VP of Operations says, “Our main intent here has been to highlight interesting artwork relating to contemporary design, music, art and culture that would keep Blend top-of-mind with photographers and clients.”
So far they have shown the works of over 600 artists, collected from around the world. Individuals can sign up to receive regular emails, each showing the work of a different artist. These emails are currently coming at the rate of one or two a day. They open with a single image and a brief story about the art or artists and usually show about a dozen examples of the artist's work (the number varies).
By going to
http://blog.blendimages.com/ it is also possible to search for the work of specific artists (if you happen to know whose work is represented) or search the collection by the month when the work was posted. I would love to see a listing of artists separated into categories like: photography, illustration, graphic design, painting, collage, video and music. Hartsook acknowledges that they “need to explore a better navigation system for accessing older articles” and says that may be coming in the near future.
The Blend crew and photographers have always had email threads and pass around relevant articles, contemporary art finds or cool things they think are worth sharing. The blog has enabled them to formalize and expand this effort as well as share what their findings with the design community at large. Some of the content is written and curated in-house, but Blend also uses consultants to find new and interesting articles.
A portion of the work found on the blog highlights the work of photographers Blend represents such as Tom Pavia, John Fedele, Terry Vine, Peter Dressel and Peter Balanger to name a few. Most of these features focus on personal projects but they all link back to the photographer's commercial collection where it is possible to license the work. However, most of the works shown on the Blend blog are not represented by Blend. Buyers would need to contact the original creator directly to see if the artwork is available for licensing.
Here’s a list of some of the works I found exciting and intriguing. Click on the name to go directly to the artist's work on the site.
Antoni Gaudi http://blog.blendimages.com/?s=Antoni+Gaudi
Faux Finishes http://blog.blendimages.com/?s=Faux+Finishes
Rob Kessler http://blog.blendimages.com/?s=Rob+Kesseler
Jared Lim http://blog.blendimages.com/?s=Jared+Lim
Ruins of Detroit http://blog.blendimages.com/?s=The+Ruins+of+Detroit
Experanza Paradise http://blog.blendimages.com/?s=Esperanza+Paradise
Carl Warner http://blog.blendimages.com/?s=Carl+Warner
Barry Underwood http://blog.blendimages.com/?s=Barry+Underwood
Monica Denevan http://blog.blendimages.com/?s=Monica+Denevan
Windows On The World http://blog.blendimages.com/?s=Windows+On+The+World
American Girls http://blog.blendimages.com/?s=American+Girls
Most Expensive Photographs In The World http://blog.blendimages.com/?s=Most+expensive
Tadao Ando http://blog.blendimages.com/?s=Tadao+Ando
Julia Fullerton-Batten http://blog.blendimages.com/?s=Julia+Fullerton-Batten
Wendy Sacks http://blog.blendimages.com/?s=Wendy+Sacks
Aaskash Nihalani http://blog.blendimages.com/?s=Aaskash+Nihalani
Slumdog Photog http://blog.blendimages.com/?s=Slumdog+Photog
Red Hong Yi http://blog.blendimages.com/?s=Red+Hong+Yi
Akamundo http://blog.blendimages.com/?s=Akamundo
Wang Qingsong http://blog.blendimages.com/?s=Wang+Qingsong
Becky Comber http://blog.blendimages.com/?s=Becky+Comber
Legopalloza http://blog.blendimages.com/?s=Legopalloza
Jazzberry Blue http://blog.blendimages.com/?s=Jazzberry+Blue
Capturing Dancers http://blog.blendimages.com/?s=Nir+Arieli
Enjoy!