that looks like something you would have shot

I feel like, moreso than someone’s comments that are directly about your work, when someone points out an image and says it “looks like something you would have shot” that this says so much more about how others perceive you as an artist and ultimately how successful you are at conveying what it is you’d like to convey in your work. I also think that there are some new insights to be gained through mentally gathering these images together and seeing what they might have in common.

I’ve had a few experiences recently where friends and acquaintances have pointed out other people’s images and said they reminded them in tone or style of my own.  Luckily, the images were really great ones, including one by a photographer I really admire.  But what interested me was some of these images’ prominent features: dramatic light, isolated subjects within an environment, subject’s unsettling eye contact with the viewer, and an overall tone that is arresting and difficult to pin down.  If this is how others’ view my work, I’m definitely not going to complain!  When people point out work and compare it to mine and I see what they see, when I agree, it’s a great feeling.  It makes me feel like I’m doing something right.

These are not at all an example of the above, but an attempt to put more pictures in my posts—from outside a very intense Halloween-decorated house in Newburyport mid-October.