Make a list of some aspects of your personality that make you unique.
● Start taking a few pictures that could begin to express this.
● How could you develop this into a body of work?

I think it is quite difficult to identify what makes you unique as so many of the traits will be common to numerous other people. Trying not to over-think this, below are some of the aspects that contibute to my personality.

Practical: I am get on with mundane tasks such as loading/unloading the dishwasher, taking out the bins, doing the recycling. I am reasonable competent at DIY and enjoy the sense of achievement from completing a project.

Procrastinator: recently I have found getting on with my studies hard, I also put off making major decisions. Left to my own devices I probably would never go on holiday as my wife organises them.

Compassionate: I try not to walk on by so I give money to people begging. I want the world to be a better place and I realise that I may not be able to change the world but I should do what I am able to.

Frustrated: I am afrustrated about lots of things, brexit, lying politicans, inequality, patriarchy, Alzheimer’s. I think as I am getting older, I’m getting angrier.

Rational/logical: I am rational and logical, definitely not emotional. I find numbers easier to deal with than words.

Unempathetic: I find it difficult to put myself in other people’s positions and to understand what they may be feeling.

Learner: in addition to my photography course, I am trying to learn to to empathise, to understand how other people feel and not assess situations just from my own point of view.

Concilliator: I try and avoid conflict, in family disputes I try and bring sides together.

Aware/uninformed: I am interested in current affairs and politics but pretty uniformed about popular culture.

In love and loved: nothing more to say.

To get a more objective perspective I asked my wife and daughter what aspects of my personality made me unique and below are their suggestions.

• Frugal, but generous
• Determined
• Disciplined
• Caring
• Patient
• Unempathetic
• Dogmatic
• Kind
• Understanding
• Empty-headed
• Stubborn
• Practcal
• Procrastinator
• Loyal
• Unromantic
• Committed
• Selfless

I think this exercise could be developed into a body of work in several ways. For the aspects that I have highlighted I think there is an opportunity to create a series which includes myself in the images or alternatively a series of self-absented images. For a different persepective I could use the aspects selected by my family and use them instead; again it might be possible to photograph these in as present and self-absent images. The final way in which it would be possible to make this exercise into a body of work would be to combine images that included aspects that I had identified with ones that members of my familiy had selelcted. These could all be one style, either present or absent, or using a different style to denote whether these were self-indentified or not.

I have decided to use this idea as the basis of my work for assignment three and so will conectrate on producing the images for the assignment for the time being.