Week 17 DLS exercises: I am...

Your next task 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 4 months talking about mostly technical stuff.  By this point you should all have a pretty good grasp on what your camera can do for you.  The last as well as this exercise are about YOU instead of 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.  In order to start making the connection between who we are and why and how we shoot what we shoot it's important to spend 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'm working on an updated "I am" list for myself and will post it and an updated self-portrait shortly.  :)