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These images are from a roll of expired Kodak 200. A roll of film I shot while wandering aimlessly, trying to find something to hold onto.

I just finished a body of work that I started last May and, photographically speaking, it is the first thing I have ever finished. I’m not counting my 365 as a “finished product,” only because the end of that work was dictated by a duration of time, and I had no control over when it ended. The end of “Character Study,” the series I just finished, was dictated by my intuition, and knowing when it was time to move on from a series I had put my heart and soul into. It is bittersweet – kind of like one of those “it’s the best thing for us both…” type of breakups. The end of “Character Study” and the beginning of whatever is next is one of the scariest junctures I have ever encountered as a photographer. I am caught somewhere between a feeling of exhilaration and apprehension.

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One of my professors always says that intuition is just really fast thinking. My intuition is in overdrive at the moment, because I have a sense of where I want to go next, I just can’t quite put it into words, or images, at the moment.

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Do you ever feel like you are about to move onto something new, but you have no idea what that something is? Maybe it is at the tip of your tongue, or hovering somewhere in your subconscious – you know it’s there, you just don’t quite know what IT is. You pour over images online and in books, you read, you write, you even attempt making images that get at whatever it is you’re searching for, but you just can’t…quite…get there.

This feeling doesn’t have to only apply to photography I suppose – it can apply to most anything in life. I think for those of us here at Mortal Muses, both the Muses and our readers, photography has become such an important part of our lives that when we find ourselves at such a juncture, it can make us feel at loose ends.

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What do you do when you are unsure of what to photograph? Do you give yourself assignments? Wait patiently on something to present itself? I already have one foot in the door of summer, which is photographic playtime for me, so I will welcome any and all comments on how you keep moving forward.

~Anna~