Exercise s for the week of March 16, 2009

Hello, all!  It's Monday and that means I'm EARLY posting this week's Exercise!!!

First, in preparation for the pet presentation at April's Portraiture workshop, Tanya of Candid Canine has asked me to pass this video clip along to you all (scroll down to the pet photography portion.)  If you don't have Realplayer installed, you can install it free for PC here or for Mac here.

Your next task for this week is not actually a photography task, but a writing exercise.  You can decide if you want to post it along with your self portraits or not.

We spent the last three months talking about very technical stuff.  By this point you should all have a pretty good grasp on what your camera can do for you.  The rest of our time together will be about what you can do for your camera.  As you develop your own style it's a common mistake to look at other people's work and try to aspire to them, rather than look at your own pictures and recognize your own true style.  

The first step we're going to take towards realizing this is spending some time defining ourselves not as photographers but as people.  You are going to spend this week coming up with an "I am..." list of 10 hats that you wear.  If you come up with 25, you need to prioritize that list, and whittle it down to ten.  Sleep on it, revisit it, take some time, and decide which 10 hats are at the top of your list.  The next thing I want you to do is to look at your self-portraits and see which of your top 10 fit with which image.  If they don't fit, then you may want to do re-takes so that your self-portraits accurately reflect who you really are.  Feel free to post them, or keep them to yourself, or email them to me if you want to share but not with everyone.

Have fun, and remember, there is no right or wrong - this is all about YOU.

I posted my 'I am...' list over on the photography blog!