Favourite photographers who influenced how you shoot: who are yours?

[EventHorizon]

Not necessarily famous names though those are fine too. Could be someone you found on Instagram five years ago whose composition style changed how you framed shots. Could be a parent or grandparent whose old prints you found in a box and could not stop looking at. Influence takes a lot of forms.

I am asking partly because I think we sometimes shorthand this as a list of canonical names but the actual answer for most people is more specific and more personal than that. The photographer who changed something for you might not be someone anyone else would recognise.

Personally my biggest influence was someone whose work I encountered entirely by accident and who I still cannot fully describe the appeal of. Something about the relationship between light and subject. I have been chasing that feeling in my own work ever since.

[StormForge62]

Saul Leiter for colour. Before I found his work I was shooting in a style I would now describe as technically fine and emotionally empty. His use of reflections and foreground obstruction rewired something for me.

[StoneCold]

My dad. He shot on film through the 70s and 80s and his prints are the best photographs of my childhood. The way he composed intimate moments without people noticing the camera is something I have never matched.

[Amber_44]

Martin Parr for making me realise that uncomfortable or unflattering images can be the most honest ones. British social photography done brutally well.

[Sentinel96]

A friend who started shooting at the same time as me. We pushed each other constantly. Seeing someone at the same level improve faster than you is the best motivation.

[MiguelCardozo]

Vivian Maier discovered posthumously. The idea that someone spent a lifetime making extraordinary work without anyone ever seeing it is something I find both inspiring and heartbreaking.

[Wizard]

Sebastiao Salgado. Genesis specifically. Changed how I thought about scale in landscape photography and what you are actually trying to say when you point a camera at the natural world.

[Vanessa26]

An account I followed on a photo sharing site about eight years ago that no longer exists. I never knew their name. They shot urban decay in a way that made it look like archaeology.

[MurkyInlet]

Honestly? The person who ran the photography thread on this forum about four years ago. Regular detailed feedback at a time when I really needed it.