The Highest Form of Flattery...

It is always an interesting one, when you see someone else's work that looks exactly like your own. You can get mad, and think they deliberately ripped you off, or you can get flattered. Flattered that someone has seen your work, and liked it enough to want to emulate it or become inspired by it. Sometimes they do it better, sometimes not as well as you did - but the point is, you have to have the right attitude about it, because (as my good friend Bobby Hundreds wisely pointed out) the bigger you get, the more they feed off of you. It's true, but it's not necessarily a bad thing.

Here is a really good example of how this happened to me recently in InStyle Magazine with Drew Barrymore. I shot a skate park editorial for Eliza Magazine in 2009, called "Concrete Garden". It was actually my very first editorial I ever shot - I was terrified. So terrified that I forgot my camera's battery on the charger the morning of, and had to rush home to get it....hahaha, oh, the memories!

Anyway, take a look, side-by-side of my work (on the left) and the aforementioned editorial - form your own opinions about it, but don't be angry, be flattered.








So, it might be a total coincidence, but either way, it just means that I had a great idea, and I did it first. Maybe not in as large a forum as InStyle, but one day I will. And for the record, the Drew editorial is adorable, and I love Andreas Sjödin's work.

xx
Maria

*InStyle images by Andreas Sjödin