Let me tell you a little story: The story behind my latest pho­to­graphic “creation”.

I was pon­der­ing for two weeks about another photo-​assignment, this time on the topic hart (as in, the Ger­man word for “hard”). After a while I came up with Hässlich Aber Richtig Teuer, which means “ugly, but really expens­ive”. I was thus look­ing for an object (or sub­ject even…) that would fit this descrip­tion, like an u.b.r.e. piece of jew­ellery, an u.b.r.e. car, or what­not — but unfor­tu­nately I didn’t come across any­thing fit­ting this tagline, and the assignment’s dead­line was approach­ing fast.

At some stage I remembered this Boing Boing post, more spe­cific­ally it’s title: “Man in ‘I [Heart] My Mar­riage’ t-​shirt arres­ted for domestic bat­tery”. Bingo. “Heart” is a beau­ti­ful hom­onym of “hart”, so there we go.

Next up: How to render “heart” in a photo. Well, many people (includ­ing myself) some­times end up express­ing their affec­tion towards someone using “I ♥ You”, so that’s it. Finally. Here’s my image.

Tues­day then I set up my cam­era with a long cable release (that I oper­ated with my toe), some flashes and a black back­ground and went ahead for a series of silly self-​portraits, the end res­ult of which you see above.

I think this is another nice example how pho­to­graphic assign­ments can really fuel your cre­ativ­ity (or weird associations).