One of my challenges for the macro course is to find subjects that are somehow meaningful to me. It’s a self-imposed challenge, not part of the course in any way. It’s simply that I find it difficult to really be interested in subjects that are only pretty. I can look at a sunset and find it beautiful, but I don’t feel any need to photograph it. I am much more interested in documenting our everyday.

My aim with photography is to document rather than to make art. Ten years from now I’d love to look at a photo and remember – “Oh yes, that’s exactly the face Ingrid used to have while reading! There’s Adrian with that favourite hat of his!” Much better than “Oh yes, look at how beautiful this is!”

Likewise I almost never buy or make things that are only beautiful but not useful.

I like that quote of William Morris:

Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful.

But to me the ideal is to achieve both. Beauty should be there to make a useful thing worth loving.

Back to the macro course…

First out were toys. Today, a selection of scarves – as a reminder of the wintery weather we’ve been having recently, and also as a sampling of our different tastes. Ingrid is very warm-blooded and almost never wears a scarf, so for her I photographed her favourite woolly hat instead.