Picture Inspiration - Week 1

I needed a jump start to my creativity. The winter had brought my motivation to a slow and sluggish pace. So I signed up for an online photography workshop entitled Picture Inspiration. This is the first online workshop I've participated in so I don't really know fully what to expect or how my follow through will be (ahem..). But as soon as I processed my online registration, I felt a spark of enthusiasm and excitement about this new creative challenge. It's 52 weeks of creative prompts, assignments and challenges led by Tracey Clark of Shutter Sisters and her own other creative fame.

Week 1 assignment was a good way to start off but not my, or probably most photographers' favorite thing to do: a self-portrait. Hey, there's a reason why we are photographers and thus on the viewfinder side of the camera. For me as a photographer, a self-portrait is nothing if not a good exercise in optimism and objectivity. I started off with forced optimism that I could get a decent, interesting shot of myself and I had to use every ounce of objectivity I could muster to forget that it was my face I was looking at. There's nothing wrong with my face other than the fact that it is mine and oh how critical of it I can be.

After countless attempts and deletions, I ended up with a shot I really like. It's a reflection in my big kitchen window late at night. It was completely dark outside and well lit in the room thus the window acted like a mirror. Here's the final version

I chose black and white for its forgiving qualities. The part I like best of this image is that it looks to me like someone else could have taken it. It doesn't have an obvious self-portrait feel to me.

I have to share one of the rejected shots because it is funny. It is one of the early shots I took experimenting with the reflection in the kitchen window. Our cat Max was outside and popped up on the window sill to beg to be let back in. I like all that is going on in this shot.

Come back and see what Week 2 holds.