Impulse

Who says good art has to be all seri­ous? Emotionblogster, one of the pho­tog­ra­phers on Flickr whose work I like, is proof that art can be fun. You don’t need a bunch of stu­dio lights, a big fancy cam­era (umm… ahem…), and a model. You just need a play­ful spirit, the will­ing­ness to exper­i­ment. It’s all about being cre­ative with what you have avail­able to you.

I like the spon­ta­neous feel of all Emotionblogster’s self por­trats. Each seems to be con­ceived in an impul­sive instant. I imag­ine her walk­ing through town, sud­denly see­ing an oppor­tu­nity, tak­ing it, then mov­ing on (like a good street pho­tog­ra­pher). She’s got a good artis­tic eye, always search­ing for some­thing visu­ally inter­est­ing — in her case, some­thing to frame her­self in. And, she’s clearly hav­ing fun with it.
A hand-held self por­trait series could have been really dull — hun­dreds of poorly framed mugs of some­one turn­ing the cam­era on them­selves. I like how Emotionblogster pushes past the obvi­ous — using light pat­terns on a mir­ror to draw atten­tion, mock­ing an ipod com­mer­cial, or using the sun as a catch light. Each photo has a spe­cific intent with clean com­po­si­tion that com­pli­ments it. It reminds me of how much fun you can have with a sin­gle, sim­ple theme.
It also is a good reminder of how much fun you can have if you bring your cam­era with you every­where.
Oh, and have I men­tioned the word “fun” yet? These pho­tos just plain fun — and hav­ing fun is the real rea­son we do cre­ative things, isn’t it?

Links

• Emotionblogster’s flickr stream — do also check out the non-self por­trait pic­tures there too; gems lurk there as well.

Related posts:

1. CoolArt: Flickr roundup
2. On Being a Photographer