Today we were considering what makes somebody successful and how we can feel that sense of success within ourselves. Being Mindful is a course which combines picture-taking with a greater awareness of our own feelings and emotions. Feeling successful is an important part of feeling happy with yourself. If goals are unrealistic then success may never be achieved but if goals are too easy we could feel like we’re not achieving enough. The way to be more mindful is to keep a sense of balance with our goals and ambitions, as well as in our day-to-day dealings with life.
We challenged ourselves to take one photograph which we felt was a representation of our own sense of ambition, success, and well-being. This sounds like a tall order but our participants already had an awareness of what makes a good self-portrait thanks to taking part in a previous workshop. This helped to make this deeply conceptual task a little easier to fathom and represent as a photograph. Discussion afterwards looked at balance, faith, hope, and ambition, as well as technical composition of the photograph. The philosophy of the image and the intent of the photographer are massively important here in order to gain a feeling of success.
Here are the best photographs that our participants felt illustrated their own personal sense of success.
Melanie Honebone 