Here is Leslie's post on the second exercise of Chris Orwig's book People Pictures. (Which you should totally buy, okay?) We were not required to shoot images this week but to look, to search, to think, and to come up with a quote. It would have been faster to just take a picture, really. I dutifully went out to get four magazines with images I like. That in itself was an interesting exercise: I had a really hard time to find magazines that contained pictures that spoke to me. More often than not I got overwhelmed by all the cluttered pages full of advertisements. German magazines have a lot less of that, by the way, and I find them visually more attractive. I discovered that I like uncluttered images, close-up shots of kids, clean images with good colors or in a crisp black and white that center on the child and his world. Those images are harder to find in magazines than you might think. I spent a frustrating hour at the local Barnes&Noble, only to come home with two magazines that sort of worked for me.... but not really.

Then Greta of GSG Photography suggested to use Pinterest as our collection device. What a brilliant idea! I already had a board of "Photography Inspiration" which was a good starting point. I spent some delightful hours going through other people's pins and found a ton of inspirational photos that show exactly what I love in children's photography. Have a quick look at my board here. As you can see, my latest favorite is Meg Bitton. Her images are clean, the colors are spot on, and they capture something more than just a cute face. Her entire portfolio is very inspiring to me. Another constant inspiration are my DC Ladies -- see their blog links below. Poke around a bit on their blogs and look at the beautiful work they create. Aren't they fabulous?

One quote from People Pictures that struck me deeply: "The problem with most of us is that we are too soft. We follow popular opinion and listen to the voices that predetermine what is good or bad. We defer to the experts and neglect to nurture our own talents." Um, yup. I tend to do that a lot. My husband keeps telling me not to listen to what others say so much and as so often, he is right. I do tend to try to make everybody happy around me, and I have a hard time just sticking up for myself and even more so, for my photography. You don't like it this way? Oh, let me change it.

So this is my hardest challenge. It took some hard thinking for me to find what exactly my vision is and how I want my images to look. It took some hard thinking to say to myself: "So that person doesn't like this image? Whatever. I like it." I need to say that more often, Whatever.

Oh, and the quote. Now, that was hard. I'm not sure I nailed it but for further inspiration, I read parts of Susan Sontag's "On Photography" which is a book so stuffed with quotable sentences that it requires slow and careful reading. It's fantastic. I found myself nodding and agreeing with just about everything I read so far.

So, what do I want my photographs to be? I want them to be frozen moments of life. I want my clients to hang those images on their walls. I want to document stories. Especially since I'm mostly shooting Expats, I want to chronicle the life of children and families in the country where they are. I want them to take those images and remember the times in that country.

Here's my quote: Photographing children is the mindful capture of spontaneity. That's an original. I hope -- it seems really hard to say something original about photography.

Don't forget to go to these blogs and read their take on today's exercise:

Binkies + Noseprints Abbey Road Designs GSG Photography Elaine Janet What Eyes See Daily DC Group -- the results of those members without a blog are posted here