"It’s one thing to make a picture of what a person looks like, it’s another thing to make a portrait of who they are." - 365 Project, Day 82

When I was in Korea teaching English, I remember a specific time where I was teaching how emphasizing words in a sentence would change its meaning.  Take 'He said that.'  It's a simple sentence by itself, but emphasize 'he', or 'said', or 'that', and its meaning changes.  The same is true for photography.  Not so much the picture itself, but what you call it.

Naming a photograph can dramatically alter people's impression of it, and change its context.  Take my photograph from a few days ago.  I called it 'Road to Self', which in my mind conjures up a picture of always falling short because you're not trying.  It's somewhat pessimistic.  On the other hand, had I called it 'Note to Self', it may give the impression of forcing yourself to slow down and stop before actually doing anything.  These are pretty different meanings, and the picture can change in people's eyes because of its name.

I don't believe naming a photo is essential; if you want the photograph to speak for itself, then you can let it stand on its own terms, and naming it (if only to help people to speak of your work) should be merely functional (i.e. Untitled 1, Untitled 2...) and not very meaningful.  If you want to add to your photo, the artistic thing to do is create a context for the viewer.

Having said that, I couldn't think of a good name for my picture, so I called it something more practical than imaginative.

Frank

His note: I took a long walk in Riverside Park today.  What a glorious day.  Couples walking hand in hand, children running, boys playing basketball, families having picnics, Canada Geese and ducks everywhere. I love summer! I must have taken 50 photos but this one by far reflected my mood the most.

Shannon

Her note: Used my Neti Pot today, hoping it will help with my allergies.

Me

I was actually pretty inspired today.  It took me a fair chunk of time to get home after work because I kept taking pictures of things.  I thought all the old staples and nails on a wooden post would give off a nice texture.  I would have loved a macro lens for this but I only had my S95 and thankfully it has manual exposure and manual focusing, which made this picture possible.

I have no idea what the weather was like very early this morning, but I do know it'll probably be pretty warm tomorrow again.  We'll see what that does for photographs.