Resolving some issues about colour

I have been racking my brains trying to work out how to fulfil the Colour assignment.  We have been asked to provide 16 images that indicate complimentary colours, harmonious colours, contrasting colours and an accent.  In addition the subject matter must be varied - so the colours shouldn't all be based on light, or coloured objects.  There should be still life and 'found' scenes, the last of which is the most difficult to realise as you have less control - although a fellow student seemed to have done a brilliant job photographing all these elements at a day long event.

I was planning something linked to some thoughts I'd had a few weeks ago and up until last night I was trying to hold myself to that.  I wrote a little about it in my previous post.  I had 4 sets of images planned or in the case of 'found' hoped for.  But the problem was none of the sets was really related although I had tried to convince myself they were all loosely based on childhood or thoughts of childhood, even tenuously.  However, I was not entirely convinced.

Today I went to buy some props from the local party store and found myself beginning to get a clearer idea of where I might be heading with this and as a result have adjusted my plans, or allowed them to evolve at any rate.  I've dropped certain ideas altogether and linked up other ideas so there is more continuity between each set. 

One of the things I was told was not to make this project about COLOUR!!!  Well, I have to say at least one set of images is going to be a riot of colour.

There are four sets and in each colours will be either complimentary, harmonious, contrasting or with an accent:

1. Still Life - Preperation

2. Colours 1

3. Colours 2 incorporating light and a gel or a colour filter in Lightroom

4. The final set is the hardest to reconcile.  The word 'found' in my mind suggests heading out and searching for images that I come across in the street or shops or parks etc.  But if I do that then this final set of images is going to be totally unrelated to the first three and will stand out as something entirely separate and that would be a shame.  So I think I am going to wait for my kids to come and inspect what I've been doing, playing with props etc and photograph that.  Perhaps it's a bit of a cheat but the photos I take here will be entirely unplanned and spontaneous which I hope gets round it.  It will also be a fitting finish to the whole assignment which in the end for me is not really about colour at all but about how I go about producing something cohesive and authentic and creative.

I have had to do some little drawings.  These it turns out are a shining example of why I use a camera to try and express myself rather than draw or paint.  So I wouldn't dream of calling it a drawing board, rather a squiggle board.  It's been very useful as I can see that Set 2 is too dominated by red and it's various relationships whereas Set 3 is too dominated by blue and green.  So I must go back to the squiggle board and do some shifting round.  Once I've achieved that I will do a shot list for all sets apart from the final one which will just be about finding the four relationship requirements.

I'd better get on with it all as it's due very soon.

My problem with Colour...

... Is that I prefer black & white!  I think I do.  I love how it shapes shapes and lighting changes and removes the image from reality further.  The book I wrote about earlier this evening on Lillian Bassman and Paul Himmel is filled with the most extraordinary black and white images. And I can't wait to move onto a section where I can start to try and figure out how to do some of the things I've seen there.  So, perhaps it's been good for me to look at colour like this as it's forcing me to open up how I work.

I've really struggled to find a way to do what is required for this assignment.  I am not sure what I've planned is right - I know there is no 'right' but I keep worrying I'm really missing something.  I think the only way to do it is with four sets of photos as we are asked to use different lighting, subjects, still life and found images, colour that is about light and colour that is about object based.  But the other work I have seen has very similar photographs which is why I'm a bit worried.

I have tried to stick to the original thoughts I had where childhood is the main theme.  I'm not sure I'm going to achieve the objectives but since the assignment is due in fairly soon I think I've got to go with what I've got planned.  I've a busy few days ahead.

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I've been feeling really strange about photography lately.  Recently I was just so cross about some dumb mistakes I had made at a shoot with a family.  And I'd been feeling disappointed with much of the work I'd been doing for a while, so that by last weekend I was really questioning whether or not I was cut out for that sort of work, but if not that then what?  And I knew that just giving up and walking away from one type of photography was not the answer anyway.  I actually know much of what was informing this mood was totally non-photography related but it was affecting my work nevertheless. 

Mistakes, however, are really important sometimes because they can act as a powerful stimulant to getting things right next time.  For various reasons I feel less despondent now having resolved that I actually just needed to take a bit more control over what I was doing.  And some clutter seems to have shifted from my mind.

Colour has been quite important to be honest as I have realised how much of a difference it will make to the images I take when working with families.  So I've started being a lot more proactive with clients about what they wear and giving them clear instructions before I turn up about choosing a simple colour palette and mixing patterns with block colours.   So although some of my lighting has been a bit ropey I can without a doubt see that when client's follow those instructions it has contributed to a more cohesive image and set of images.  I just hadn't thought about this before embarking on this section of the course. So that's good!

Paul Himmel and Lillian Bassman The First Retrospective

Ingo Taubhorn and Brigitte Woischnik

Haus der Photographie, Deichtorhallen Hamburg

After I submitted assignment 2 I shared it on an OCA Facebook group and a very supportive fellow student, Jayne Kemp suggested I look at Alexey Brodovitch, as my images were blurry like the ones he produced in his collection Ballet(1).  I had not heard of him and Googled. 

As Brodovitch had such a huge influence on Paul Himmel and Lillian Bassman, amongst many others (I’ll write about him too soon), their work came up in the search results as well. 

I was struck by how absolutely beautiful the photos are.  I was also very interested in the two photographers life stories.  I immediately wanted to order a book about them and within minutes of reading Jayne’s suggestion had spent a small fortune at Amazon. 

The book I ordered about Himmel & Bassman is something that I am going to treasure for years and years; I am so bowled over by the photographs and their history.

Both photographers but especially Lillian Bassman are probably known by history of photography experts but their names are not on a par with Diane Arbus, David Baily or Richard Avedon for example, all of who were working at the same time and were colleagues of the couple.  In fact Lillian Bassman and Diane Arbus have a lot of common threads in their histories.  Both came from Jewish immigrant backgrounds, both met and married husbands at a very young age defying their parents’ wishes, both worked in fashion and at Harper’s Bazaar with Brodovitch.  And both worked in partnerships with their husbands.  However, Arbus and Bassman’s lives do not remain similar, as they grow older.  Unlike Diane Arbus, Bassman and her husband did not get divorced and stayed together until they died, both in their 90s although Paul Himmel’s life ended shortly before Bassman’s.  Bassman continued to work in fashion for some time whereas Diane Arbus left fashion behind as much as she could concentrating instead on the people she found who seemed so separate and isolated from society (although she continued to accept jobs from fashion publications as well as topical magazines up until her suicide in 1971).  Bassman crucially had no tragic and violent self-imposed death cutting her career short and propelling her work as Arbus work did, and although her career in fashion lay dormant for a time she nevertheless took the most incredible photos at Paris Fashion week in her 80s.  While she wasn't working in fashion she continued to experiment with photography and explored a variety of subjects such as body builders and abstracts made from pavement cracks. The Birdlady for German Vogue 2000 taken when she was 80 is one of the most striking images I have ever seen.  It’s extraordinary and I think all Lillian Bassman’s long experience as a photographer, art director and a human being is evident in the photograph.

One of the things I enjoy so much about both photographers is their flair.  They both experimented with blur and motion as well light, exposure, aperture and pushing dark room techniques beyond the norm.  Paul Himmel, like Brodovitch, produced a book about ballet exploring the dancers’ movements by slowing down shutter speed and abstracting the images.  Himmel and Bassman produced work that was highly original and artistic and ultimately very beautiful. 

They were absolutely committed to experimenting with form and process.  Their solarized images, for instance, “look(s) half-negative, half-positive; black and white photographs that are embellished with colour, or colour photographs that look as though they are taken with false colours.  What’s more the contours in the image are outlined as if drawn by hand’[2]. 

I was amazed to read about how they used bleach to lighten and change images.  One of the things that struck me about this aspect of their work is that, although Photoshop is sometimes frowned upon for some reason, it really is a only a modern version, albeit one that is far more powerful, of what photographers have done for a long time manually in the dark room.  True, modern methods are quicker, offer far greater possibilities and are perhaps simpler to learn.  But I believe all photographers who worked before digital came along will have learned even the basics of pushing an image, or developing it in a way that produced unusual or unexpected results and have heard David Baily say as much in an interview he did on Monday 10 2014 with Mark Lawson for the BBC.  Bassman and Himmel, however, experimented with greater alacrity and creativity than most and the results are at times extraordinary.

Bassman, unusually, learnt her darkroom techniques before she learned how to use a camera.  Consequently she was extremely adept and both photographers spent hours getting processes right.  Despite their age and as digital manipulation developed they learnt about that too. 

Lillian Bassman, as I mentioned, worked for Brodovitch, the Art Director of Harpers Bazaar before becoming a photographer and eventually as Art Director of Junior Bazaar, the youth orientated sister magazine of the famous publication where so many of Bassman’s contemporaries also worked such as Diane Arbus, Richard Avedon, Man Ray and Robert Frank amongst others. 

Her experience as Art Director gives her images a very clear sense of design, which is one of the things that I find so appealing in them.  But her work was not confined to fashion and she ‘continually reinvented herself as an artist – particularly in the way she experimentally sounds out new worlds of imagery well beyond the fashion cosmos”[3]

Paul Himmel grew restless with fashion and eventually stopped working as a photographer although he continued to work personally.  At a time when many would be looking towards retirement he retrained and then worked for decades as psychotherapist.

They grew old together working the whole time and staying very much alive from what I have read and understood until the end.   They both died in their mid-90s and I think they are inspirational.

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[1] Ballet - 1945 Publisher: J. J. Augustin, New York

[2]Page 276

[3] Page 30

References from the book produced to accompany the retrospective at
Haus der Photographie, Deichtorhallen Hamburg

Roland Barthes Camera Lucida

There is no doubt in my mind that I will need to read this book again, if I am even to begin to get to grips with it.  It’s no secret, I’m sure, this is an incredibly difficult book to take in and I certainly found it so.  However, I read it relatively slowly and tried to absorb each of the chapters as much as I could before moving on. 

I think that although the book is challenging, Roland Barthes does give the reader a bit of a roadmap during the first quarter of the book, detailing what he is aiming to explore – what exactly is a photograph and why are some photographs important either culturally at large or to individuals. This roadmap comes in the shape of specific language, which he uses to describe himself as accurately as possible.  As you work your way through the beginning of the book his discourse is difficult to penetrate but once you've absorbed the meaning of the following terms you are helped somewhat.

Studium – studied cultural details and elements in a photograph.  That which we recognize and rationalise .

Punctum – a word that describes the impact of a photographed scene that “shoots out of it like an arrow” or a “sting, speck, cut, little hole”. [1] This second word describes how a photograph works at a deeper level than the culture we see and which we recognize.  “Punctum… is that accident which pricks me (but also bruises me, is poignant to me)”[2]

He also describes the various contributors to the making of a photograph – the Operator (camera person), Spectator (viewer of the photograph) and then the Spectrum which is the subject, be it person, object, place or mood/atmosphere. 

It is at this point that Barthes introduces the subject of death and how everything that photographed is essentially dead once it’s been captured: “this word (spectacle) retains through it’s root, a ‘relation’ to spectacle and adds to it that rather terrible thing which is there in every photograph: the return of the dead.”[3]

Being that this book is about facing death, the death of his mother and subsequently the notion of his own death, Barthes returns to this theme throughout the book. And I will too later in this blog.

I understand that in my above adumbrated version of Barthes’ work I have attempted to condense some very complex ideas, and that I probably really only have a fairly superficial understanding at this point but I hope I’m heading in the right direction.

There are several pivotal points for me in the book.  In particular when discussing the methods by which the Operator (photographers) create their work which aim to surprise the Spectator he lists various methods for doing so.  One of these methods is when photographers use “contortions of technique: superimpressions, anamorphoses[4], deliberate exploitation, of certain defects (blurring, deceptive perspectives, trick framing).”[5] 

I mention this as I am interested in blurring and motion.  The punctum which Barthes speaks of is often more readily accessible to me in some of this type of photography, however, he is fairly dismissive of it even though he concedes that there are some very accomplished photographers using these contortions. “…great photographers have played on these surprises, without convincing me, even if I understand their subversive bearing”. [6]  I have felt quite conflicted since reading this and agree with him one moment, believing I should focus on getting ‘real photography’ right rather than being distracted by my desire to blur with long shutter speeds on my camera or fiddle for hours with my iphone (using the Snapseed app for instance to distort and paint and create little scenes that remind me of something very dreamlike and sort of internally ancient and linked more to our unconscious inner worlds) and then swing the other way, wondering if I should just allow myself to really enjoy that side of photography – since I do so enjoy it.  I’m sure there is time for both if I think rationally about it but I have an inner nasty parent saying – ‘Stop that, silly stuff!’ 

(This conflict has led to me wonder if there is Photography Art as opposed to Art where photography is the medium.  I shall have to explain this in more detail elsewhere I think as this entry is really about Barthes’ book.)

Earlier I mentioned that Barthes discusses the relationship between death and photography throughout this book which is hardly surprising as he was prompted to write it when grieving for his late mother whom he had lived with all his life.  He felt her loss deeply and as one does when a loved one dies looked for some connection in photographs.  He found something of what he was looking for in a photograph of his mother as a child where he believes he saw her essence even though she was very young and not the adult he had always known. 

During the last section of the book Barthes describes powerfully how we react to photographs, and how we relate to the truth in every photograph, which is the ‘catastrophe’ of inevitable death.  “…the photograph tells me death in the future.  What pricks me is the discovery of this equivalence.  In front of the photograph of my mother as a child, I tell myself: she is going to die: I shudder, like Winnicots psychotic patient, over a catastrophe which has already occurred.  Whether or not the subject is already dead, every photograph is this catastrophe.”[7]

I clearly remember my horrific realisation when my first son was about a year old that he would, if he is lucky enough to have a full life, grow old and one day die.  And that it is very unlikely that I should be there with him, if all goes well with his life that is, so that he would be without me at that time.  It was a heartbreaking realization, and one we humans could not or should not dwell on as we go about our day to day.  I think Barthes is discussing how photographs have the potential and ability to punch this realization into our consciousness when we look at them in happy times.  And, of course, when we look at them in times of grief can bellow that reality back at us.  Death is unavoidable.

“It is because each photograph always contains this imperious sign of my future death each one, however attached it seems to be to the excited world of the living, challenges us, one by one outside of any generality.”[8]

Barthes often refers to the photograph as a performance.  In fact he likens photography to theatre; “Photography is a kind of primitive theatre, a kind of Tableaux Vivant, a figuration of the motionless and made up face beneath which we see the dead”[9], and this is a very encouraging for me.  I would like to think I can and should use photography to create my own little theatrical moments.   I am torn between photographing others and photographing myself as an ‘actor’ in a still tiny moment that is nevertheless a drama of sorts.  I must look at Cindy Sherman’s work more as she is the most obvious example I can think of in relation to this sort of work, although am also reminded of Jessa Fairbrother, whose work was recommended to me by my tutor.

Roland Barthes’ book was not an easy read but it was intensely interesting and valuable.  I am left once again with a sense of deep frustration that I haven’t read Sartre or Nietzsche, or a host of others not even mentioned in the Barthes book.  It is so annoying to be so ignorant.  I can put all these people on my very long list of books to read but who knows when I will get to them.  However, it does make me wonder if I would enjoy Understanding Visual Cultureperhaps later on if I continue with these studies, as I have been following someone’s blog who is doing that module.  It looks very interesting indeed!

All references aprt from no. 4 to Camera Lucida by Roland Barthes, Vintage Books, Translated by Richard Howard, Published by Vintage 2000, Copyright Editions du Seuil 1980, Translation Copyright Farrarm Straus and Girouux 1981

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[1] Page 26

[2] Page 27

[3] Page 9

[4] a distorted projection or drawing which appears normal when viewed from a particular point or with a suitable mirror or lens: Google dictionary

[5] Page 33

[6] Page 33

[7] Page 96

[8] Page 97

[9] Page 32

the photograph as contemporary art

It took me a long time to finish one of the books of our reading list (and I've quite a few to get through yet!)  the photograph as a contemporary art by Charlotte Cotton covers an enormous amount of work and so can only ever say very little about each photograph or artist.  Because of this it rattles through, or at least it felt like that to me, without ever offering much to grab hold of apart from facts which presumably to save time and words, are given in what also seemed to me quite a pedestrian manner.  I appreciate how much work there was to discuss and see that it's a comprehensive book that gives a beginner a lot to take in.

Although it took me a long time to read, due to my interpretation that it was a quite a dry book, I did enjoy learning about different styles and approaches.  The section I felt most compelled by was Intimate Life, probably because I had heard of many of the photographers there but also because I am fascinated by these sorts of photographs even though I don't really take them myself.  The lives depicted are often quite extreme such as Corrine Day's or Nan Goldin's and far removed from my own but nevertheless fascinating and horrifying at times.  There are also more sedate moments and lives depicted but I suppose similar themes; the difficulty of life and managing aging, loss, love for instance.  I like the tenderness, boldness, honesty and bare emotion that many of the photographers in that section explore.

Although I relate to the intimacy of the photographers I mention above I was also taken with the Something and Nothing chapter.  I find these little moments of humanity just so interesting and telling about who we are.  I particularly liked Wolfgang Tillman's Suit, a photograph of a boiler suit hanging over the door like a skin that has been shed. 

It was interesting to read about many of the photographers discussed even though if only briefly and the book is I'm sure one that I will return to. Even now as I flick though though it while I am writing this I am drawn in to read about some of the ideas behind the work I'm looking at.

I guess Cotton's book opened my eyes further about photography and art - as opposed to photography as merely a good way of recording moments.  There is something so profound in many of the photographs discussed, and deeply moving.  Having just made my way though Roland Barthes Camera Lucida (which I will write up over the next couple of days) I see the little stabs of poignancy or recognition that are so difficult to express any other way, and which he discusses throughout his book.  It's very exciting for me to be delving into this - I wish my time were less limited although without my full, busy, sometimes rather trying existence I might not feel the need to find a way to express myself or learn about how others have. (Incidentally, I am fully aware that most people's lives are pretty trying and much worse at times and it's not just me who finds it a bit of struggle!  Photography does seem to explore modern lives in a way which questions all of that quite profoundly I think.)

I'm glad to have finished the book and am sure it will be be used as a reference throughout the rest of my studies and beyond.

the photograph as a contemporary art by Charlotte Cotton, New Edition, Thames & Husdon World of Art, 2004 and then 2009.

Colour relationships

3 photographs for the first part and 3-4 for the second part.

Part 1
Produce one photograph for the combination of primary and secondary colours with proportions as close to those listed by German poet, J.W. Von Goethe

Red:Green 1:1
Orange:Blue 1:2
Yellow:Violet

The photos I am using for this first part are not the ones I planned at all.  I took several on the beach and while they are OK apart from the Red/Green one which was a complete flop, I was happier with other photos that I took during the same week.  Although these were not my planned photos I did have colour relationships on the brain much of the time.


Red Green 1:1 - This was taken on my phone and processed using various apps to enhance and bring out the colour, plus blur the background.  Not sure if this is acceptable but it's the best example I've got with these colours and proportions.  I know you can sort of see the seams as the editing I used for blurring is new to me and I've not done it in a very sophisticated way.

Orange Blue 1:2 - I have actually increased the blue here to make the most of it and bring proportions in line with the list using Lightroom but feel that would be OK since filters or Lightroom are reccommended at the beginning of the Colour section.  The first time I processed this image was rather more green to be honest.  I didn't take it with the blue-orange relationship in mind but saw it when I loaded the images onto my computer and felt it was a strong image that showed the relationship well.

f1.8 ISO 100 1/160sec 50mm

Yellow Violet 1:3 - This tent is so strange.  One minute it looks blue then it looks purple.  In the bright sunlight it looked purple but now I'm not so sure. Anyway, there is some yellow in the back ground and I have made the whole image have a violet hue to try and convince myself that the tent is not at all blue in the slightest.  How tricky colour can be!

f1.4 ISO 100 1/8000sec 50m

Part 2
Produce 3 or 4 images which feature colour combinations that appeal to you.  Make note of any colour imbalance.  I have found Colour extremely difficult to get my head round.  I can't get into my head what is complimentary and what isn't.  I mean I can read in a book that colours opposite each-other on the colour wheel are complimentary but it makes no sense to me - are they, I think to myself?  So does that mean that this photo where blue and green are together are not harmonious?  Isn't there a silly saying red & green should never be seen?  Or perhaps it's blue and green?  I must say I would like to be able to put lovely colours together and create a harmonious colour palette but it's going to take a lot of getting my head round it. The storm clouds below seem very dramatic - but is that merely the colour clash - bright green and deep purple/grey or is because you can see they are storm clouds which contrast very aggressively with the sunlight buildings?  The colours in the final photograph aren't really colours at all apart from the red - what do black and white come under?  Yet those colours work well together and always have done...I think!  I don't think I've been terribly erudite in this exercise but colour to me seems incredibly tricky.

Green & Blue

Orange & Blue

Green & Purple/Grey

Red & Cream & Black

Some thoughts and some reading

Having not read nearly enough for the first half of this year I am now trying to make up for it.  I've just finished the Diane Arbus book; I am also nearly done with one of the books from the reading list, and mostly through a book about Lillian Bassman and Paul Himmel.  For some reason I have also just started Camera Lucida by Roland Barthes as suggested by my tutor, perhaps because my life isn't quite challenging enough!

Barthes talks about the photograph being a recent 'disturbance' for civilisation to deal with, whereby the self is for the first time able to confront itself as the other.  He dismisses paintings and etchings which came before.  I'm intrigued by his understanding of portrait photography.  I wonder what he would make of the current 'selfie' trend.  Whether we take the photograph ourselves or ask, possibly pay someone else to take it for us, there is no denying the level of activity related to this modern 'disturbance' has reached fever pitch in the last decade. I recently heard on one of the many 'fascinating facts' films my eldest son watches so avidly on YouTube that we have taken more photographs in the last... now, was it two hours, weeks or years... I don't think it matters... more photos in the last tiny amount of time than have been taken in the whole history of photography.  What is this desperate splitting of the self into two entities, whereby the self gets to gaze upon itself as an other so frequently and with such alacrity about?

(Splitting is an interesting phenomena in psychotherapy and one which I read a great deal about last year, which describes an individual's inability to see the self and others as rounded, mature cohesive entities or objects.  So someone who is split sees only fabulous objects or disgusting objects in the self and in others for instance.  A split person cannot see herself or others as good and bad at the same time.  A split person is polarised as described in a book titled Splitting: (1)"..unconsciously seeing people as all good or all bad, an extreme way of coping with confusion, anxiety, and mixed feelings.  Splitting is especially prevalent under stress...")

I can't help but wonder what we're doing as a culture when we split our selves so regularly as we seem to do with the constant compulsion to see ourselves as an other - the beautiful, acceptable, desirable other we want the world to see as opposed to that which we'd rather the world didn't see.  Are we and if so why are we polarising our Selves to such an extent  - hidden, undesirable self and shiny, highly marketable other by means of images which we either take ourselves or get someone to take for us?

It has struck me as I read about and learn to market myself online (I still feel hopeless in this regard but I continue to battle one with it, even though sometimes it all feels excrutiatingly gormless and uncomfortably clumsy) that the world we live in has pretty much always demanded an an outer persona, a mask or several which we present to the world.  Very few people get to know the inner world and person but in certain key relationships the outer persona dissolves to a greater or lesser extent.  Yet today, people have an added dimension to penetrate if they are to get to know someone well - the controlled, self-concious online persona that so many of us now feel obliged to construct; a marketing tool which can be used to market the self just as much as it might market a business or service.  Often people have websites or blogs, not to mention social networking pages that are primarily about themselves - indeed I do for work purposes as well as this blog.  A portrait or several (or many, many portraits) are nearly always crucial in these presentations. Photographs of many different standards and styles, but nevertheless images of the self as other are plastered all over the internet and people, we, most of us to a greater or lesser extent, are scrambling to load more and more images that represent the online persona we wish to present to the world. 

I will keep on with Camera Lucida - I have a feeling there will be much more in it to make me think about how, why, what in relation to the very modern habit of placing photographs of ourselves all over the internet.  The book is extremely challenging to say the least but has already fed into some questions and thoughts that have been on my mind. 


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I am feeling a bit lost about where I'm at with photography at the moment.  I go out and take photographs of families as that is what is coming my way more often than not.  I am focused on finding a voice or style but I feel at the moment I'm simply taking photographs that aren't really anything.  In a way, I feel that since attempting to find a 'voice' I've got worse not better with that side of the photography I do.  I imagine this is a normal part of learning and remember feeling something similar when I first started learning to use a camera in manual.  I suspect it has also to do with some lack of patience I have with myself.

I recently watched a short clip online of photographer, (2) Gregory Heisler, whom I did not know.  His work is very powerful and distinctive, so I'm glad I came across it.  In the clip he discusses how finding a style is not an aesthetic thing - it's about how you see the world.  He advises, as he was advised, to take photographs that you cannot help but take and that that more you take these photographs that you cannot help but take the closer you will get to knowing your style.  In theory this sounds great - but I am just not sure what it is that I cannot help but take.  I want only to take close ups of children's faces sometimes.  I'm intrigued by the capacity and promise for what they might one day become that exists in their faces even when they are very young.  And then I find them intensely difficult to work with and think I'd prefer never to take another photograph of a child again.  Then there are times when I just want to be the master of my own mini productions with an image or series of images that explore some of the themes I touched on in my last assignment.  (Pictures of self as other taken by self!) I also have found the last few months that I like landscapes sometimes - something that I had no idea about a few months ago.  I think I just have to keep searching but I do wish I felt better about the family portrait stuff for now. Because as things stand I feel stuck.

1. Spitting, Bill Eddy, LCSW, JD & Randi Kreger, Raincoat Books, 2011, Kindle Edition 6%
2. Gregory Heisler video: http://vimeo.com/100946762