This is my most recent SI Snapshot from the Falcons vs. Jaguars game at the Georgia Dome. SNAPSHOT is one of the many web-stops I hit every single day.

Part of my morning ritual is guzzling down a second cup of coffee and going through a large number of photography, video, design and advertising sites. I consider this routine a necessity in my line of work. I’ll always start with Sports Illustrated’s Snapshot App on Google Chrome (which inspired this blog post), but I’ll work my way through about 20? 30? Maybe 50 sites every morning. That process can take as long as two hours for me each day.

I consider it a part of my job to be aware of work that is being produced outside my niche, as well. While I usually check the sports sites out there first, I ALWAYS find myself branching out for inspiration. I check the NYT Lens Blog and In Focus – The Atlantic’s photo blog. I end up googling about half the names I see on there and finding their sites. The mornings meander through a lot of opened browser tabs, some twitter-inspired suggestions from the creative world and a group of usual blogs that I have to check.

After I scour those, I leave the medium of photography entirely. I try to find whats new and inspiring in the world of film. I look at blogs about great design and color theory. I try to find as much new music as I can on Spotify. Again, a lot of my stops are nothing more than a tweet that catches my eye, but you never know what will inspire you.

I find that a lot of my better concepts are inspired by things outside my realm. A plucky track by a Mexican acoustic guitar duo (blasting on a friend’s iPod at 4 a.m. en route to set up for Spring Training portraits) can conjure up a 30 second TV spot. A great Vimeo clip could inspire something exciting for my next photoshoot.

So that being said, I’d love to hear what website you hit up every single day to get your daily dose of inspiration? Is it on Luceo or on Sports Shooter? Can you not get moving without checking APAD or do you need to head over to NPR’s The Picture Show? Anything and everything that gets your creativity going for the day, even if it’s not a visual site…send it on over!