Inspired - Elliot Erwitt Photography

Source: auggie tolosa via flickr

As a recent assignment in my latest photography class I had to choose my favorite “historical photographer”. After Googling and reading books from the library for a few days, I chose Elliot Erwitt. If you aren’t familiar with his work I encourage you to take a look at his website (click here) To my surprise I choose someone who almost always shoots black & white when I love color so much.

There’s 2 major reasons I picked his photography – I have more but let’s be honest, you don’t want to spend all day reading my blog. 

•1^st is his sense of humor (mostly due to perspective) – He has an entire collection of ironic/funny photos titled “phototoons”.

• 2^nd he loves dogs and does great photos of them.

Part of my assignment was after choosing this photographer is to take a photograph that emulates what you like about that photographer’s work. Elliot Erwitt has several photos oh dogs from the prospective of the ground featuring the dog in full frame and a portion of the owner’s legs. I highly encourage you to do a google image search of  “Elliot erwitt dogs” to see what I’m talking about.

Anywho- Here’s some shots from my attempt to re-create that myself.

Say hello to my husband's feet

Romeo (right) has a gangsta lean & Molly (left) is in deep concentration

I like the angle and the expression on his face in this one

Self Portrait

As part of the photography class I am in I had some homework to do this week. One of the assignments was to do a self portrait. I didn't want to get all dressed up slap my camera on a tripod and take a pretty picture. I wanted to show myself as well the real myself.


I am not the kind of girl that really enjoys getting dressed up all the time (don't get me wrong I enjoy a good dress every now and then) but usually I spend my weekends in my pajamas, not fixing my hair, not putting on makeup, and knitting every second. This is when I am the happiest. So that's exactly the way I wanted to show myself. So here's my self portrait!

Here's the real me- Messy hair, knitting needles, pajamas, and not a smidgin of makeup. It's not the prettiest picture I've ever taken but it's certainly realistic. This is the happiest state of me.


I think this was a really good exercise even if you aren't a photographer or want to be one. Think about yourself - the real yourself and grab a picture of it. When life is getting you down, your job is bleeding your creativity, anything, whip that picture out of what you REALLY are and get back to it.


"To be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight, and never give up fighting" - e.e. cummings