Meta Portrait Photography

I was invited out by Mr.John tonight to visit the Portrait Salon Exhibition at the White Cloth Gallery in Leeds, where I also met up with fellow blippers ZMT (for the first time) and Snapshot Sam. As it turned out I missed almost the entire event through chatting away, first to my blip friends, and then to some of the delightful young students who were in attendance. ZMT showed off his smooth chat-up style and soon had Emma here posing for his camera. I thought I'd take a meta-portrait. A portrait of the portrait photographer at work, taken in a gallery holding an event celebrating portrait photography. You couldn't really want for more self-reference in a photograph! I chose this one mainly for the thumbs-up being given up by Emma's friend here.

I've been talking about beauty this week and there have been some wonderful comments made. I particularly liked Flotsam's remark that true beauty is exuded rather then worn. Beauty is very much in the eye of the beholder and I believe it is possible to tune your eye to see beauty almost anywhere. It can be very personal too. All of us are capable of finding a beauty in things that may well be entirely invisible to other people. Yet, despite all this relativism, there is often a consensus surrounding beauty, one that I suspect is free of cultural bias. I'm putting my head up above the parapet here with a little trepidation. These two young women were very striking. I'm sure they turned every head in the room, male and female alike. They had a presence. They radiated something that I struggle to put into words, something that I can recognise yet find impossible to describe. I have to admit that I'm becoming increasingly fascinated by this quality, whatever it is and whatever you might want to call it.

After chatting to Emma and her friend I was soon accosted by another beautiful (in the same sense) young woman who claimed to know me. I soon recognised her as someone I'd taken a portrait of earlier in the year. I was quite chuffed that she remembered me. She's just started studying photography at Bradford College so I naturally tried to encourage her to join blip. And here's the portrait I took of Georgia back in April. It can be a very small world at times. I love that.