What Makes You Happy?

Photo: Coeur de Xocolat for The Brigade. Image (c) Diana Thompson / Fashion Loves Photos.

This post is meant to be about introducing a new creative project and a call out for people to be photographed, but I felt that it needed a little bit of back story first. If you want to click straight through to the project information, click here.


A few days ago, I made a snap decision about something I'd been thinking on for a while. I had three creative projects planned out in great detail, but was struggling to choose which direction to go in with them. I had one stand out idea which felt like the right thing to do as it seemed more "commercially viable", but it's intent changed as I tried to fit it in to pass the scrutiny of an Arts Council application form. It was making me miserable and frustrated, and giving me a huge creative block across everything - photography, drawing, writing, everything. I was fighting against and compromising myself, and that's not normally who I am.

I've had a few ups and downs in my personal life of late, mostly which have been health related. I hadn't realised just how much everything had got to me until I came home from a doctor's appointment one afternoon and spent about an hour crying for what felt like no reason at all. None of the health issues are a matter of life or death - it may be frustrating but it's not end of the world territory. But it was one of those situations where holding one grain of sand is nothing, but to have an entire desert dumped on top of you was a fight to not sink to the bottom.

It was all beginning to feel like a perpetual cycle of doom. I knew I had to do something to move forward, but was completely incapable of taking the first step. What I needed to do was take my own advice - one which brilliantly flashed up in front of me after conducting an interview with MadeIn Magazine.

So with that in mind, I decided to push forward with the third project I had sketched out. It was the biggest and most ambitious one, but it also felt like the right time to do it.

The idea centres around a simple premise. I want to photograph 365 people and have them answer the question "What makes you happy?" They will have a chance to think about the question in advance, and the portrait will be shot with either an item, photograph or location relevant to how they answer.

If you are in London or visiting within the next few months and would like to be involved, please email whatmakesyouhappy.flp@gmail.com. Tell me what makes you happy, and we can set up a portrait session.

Until next time,

Diana xx

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(All photos (c) Diana Thompson / Fashion Loves Photos unless otherwise stated. Please do not reproduce without written permission.)