Perceptions

While visiting my daughter Liz in Los Angeles, I found a copy of a book by Joel Sternfeld called "Stranger Passing." It contains stunning portraits of people all over the United States, and some of them are in slightly strange settings. I was blown away by the portraits, and spent perhaps an hour studying them. A while later I was sitting on the patio in the back yard, while Liz played with the two dogs, and suddenly felt that there was a picture there. Not a "my" kind of portrait, but a portrait more in the style of the book I had been reading. So I told Liz to stop there for a minute, and did several photographs. This in no way matches the amazing work in the book, but rather it has echoes of how some of the portraits in the book felt. What was so interesting to me was that an hour earlier I would not have done her portrait in this way. It was amazing to feel my perceptions change because of studying the photographs of someone else. It was such a cool experience!