my crit group (and the skull)

three of my amigos (rob, sonya and charles) and i started a crit group. we meet once every 4-6wks and do three things:

1. show general new work
2. trade a piece of inspiration (poi) with someone else
3. show the new work based on last month's piece of inspiration

this past month was our first meeting. we had it at wonderful farleys and it was great. we showed new and old work, caught up about our photo lives and at the end we traded our poi's (ie our homework to each other.) sonya and i brought tears from magazines, charles brought an awesome huge paintbrush that looked like it was 30yrs old, and rob accidentally forgot his but would bring it to whoever was his trade. as the cards fell, sonya took my poi, charles took sonya's, rob took the brush and i put myself in rob's trust for his future poi. the next week he dropped this off:


ack! a skull! it had been a long day and i actually wasn't sure if it was real (no, it's resin). i've been racking my brains for what a skull could inspire me to shoot. here are my ideas so far:
- the actual skull as a still life
- the skull somewhere on location with me
- something that represents death, or someone somehow posed in a way that is related to death/rebirth
- someone sleeping ("the long sleep?"
- someone lying down
- a haunted, empty person

i had a shoot yesterday and tried photographing the girl lying down. that's checked off my list so far as a no-go. it looked pretty bad and i felt uninspired.

so mr. skull sits on my window sill next to my desk and i look at him every day in hopes that i come up with something genius to shoot either of him or inspired by him. for the first week i was kinda freaked out by having a skull sit next to me all the time, but now i've started calling him mr. skull in hopes that a friendly familiarity with my skull engenders a creative spark instead of blatant discomfort. i'll keep you updated.

mr. skull, speak to me.