James' lecture today was on beauty. I think I gained some knowledge and it made me question a few things about my own practice, which I can write about in my 3000 word essay. The main topic that stuck with me was my stance on my practice and how Taste fits within in.

Where do I stand within the spectrum of wanting to take cool images because they're cool rather than to actually mean anything, and having meaning behind them?

I take pictures because I think it looks good or for a purpose other than to have any signifiant meaning behind it. My commercial practice is totally fashion based and I do not mind producing apparent 'meaningless' images as long as people look at them and appreciate them for being 'beautiful'? I question the word beautiful because beauty is based on taste, and as James argued today, who dictates what is good taste and what is bad?

What I think is good taste will be very different from what the next person argues good taste is, unless they agree with me, then they will have good taste, too. But only in my opinion.

I turned to one of my close friends who explained her opinion in terms of design, and showed me a very inspiring video which illustrates the idea so well for me.

in terms of design everyone who designs has good taste, its basically on the job application. 'Good taste' is your eye for design; your ability to tell if something works or if something doesn't.
It doesn't matter if its a picture of a tomato or of a dog and you dont like tomatoes or dogs, you can still tell if it works; if the composition is there or if the colours are saturated enough. A good designer, (or photographer I think) can differentiate between the good and the bad qualities, and not allowing their personal opinions to get in the way of their critiquing work.
People say art is subjective which is true in a way, but as a designer you have to be objective to be able to remove personal opinions when viewing others work.
This makes total sense to me because thats what tutors do when they see students work.

colours are emotional contagegent within artwork. for example inside out, the colours reflect the feelings, joy is yellow, fear is purple, sadness is blue, anger is red, disgust is green.

The video below illustrates taste and how designers have to work to be able to demonstrate theirs to its full potential.
The idea that your work kills you because your taste strives for you to do better, and that the only way of rectifying this is to keep working because by going through a large volume of work you close the gap between frustration and ability. I love that idea so much; its really helped me to understand the process of learning too as its putting words to my frustrations. It will be really helpful for me to include this in my essay about the process of learning.