WHAT do a Honda motorbike, an easel, a filing cabinet and the Falkirk Wheel have in common? All have been a source of inspiration to Scottish writers, as an intriguing new exhibition shows.

Inspired, a commission to mark both the Six Cities Design Festival and the Word literary festival, saw photographer Iain Clark taking portraits of Iain Banks, AL Kennedy, Liz Lochhead, Tom Leonard, Alasdair Gray, Louise Welsh and 15 other writers with the things that inspired them. For novelist and short story writer Ruth Thomas, it was the filing cabinet in which she stores various keepsakes - postcards, photos, old tickets. For Suhayl Saadi, it was a mandolin.

"Like all the best ideas, the issue of the exhibition came up in a pub conversation with Graham Murtagh, who's involved with the Scottish Review of Books, who approached me to see if I'd be interested," says Clark. "The objects weren't too much of a problem. Obviously the title of the exhibition is Inspired so that the writers could pick anything that fitted that. I did give a few pointers but most came up with the ideas themselves and the objects they picked are great because they're not always what you'd immediately think of [as motivational]."

Clark says he enjoyed the challenge of the variety of styles required by the project - which involved photographing everything from a computer's screensaver to the Falkirk Wheel.

"The style is obviously dependent on the subject," he explains. "I went round to each person's house to have a chat and a look round to pick an interesting spot for them to pose. I tried to make each portrait different and show the authors in distinct ways to best reflect the person and their object. It was very important for me to get facial shots but I also used the theme of hands, as they're writers, so I incorporated that into quite a few shots, like with Saadi's portrait with a Mandolin - he had great long fingers to work with."

Every shoot went smoothly, he says, bar one. "Originally Iain Banks chose the Forth Bridge but, on the day of shooting the East Coast was covered in fog, so that was the only one that changed, and we turned to his other choice, his Honda motorbike. It was a great privilege to meet these people who were all amazingly nice and also very generous about each other's work. There's a great sense of community between them, which is really refreshing."

• Inspired is at the Hub, University of Aberdeen, 9 May until 3 June. Entry is free.