Pygmalion as a photographer - did you fall in love with a photo you created?

<p>The story and the pattern are both <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pygmalion_(mythology)">old and recurring</a> : falling in love with your artistic creation. </p>

<p>Has it happened to you, as a photographer? I will answer yes, to some extent. I've been fortunate enough to have taken a few (not many) portraits in time which I would label as haunting beauty. It wasn't the models themselves (it's not "beauties"), nor am I naive enough to not realize it's my own interpretation of that fleeting moment. Yet the emotion is there, of my own will, giving and extending the life of that instant. </p>

<p> </p>

<p>Actually, yes.</p>

<p>But they are photos of people who were already special to me, and the photos felt as though I had really captured a part of them.</p>

<p>Although I'll also admit to having a very strong attachment to some landscapes I've shot. But there again, I was in love already. The camera simply captured what was already there.</p><div></div>

<p>Pygmalion's myth is more than the more common emotional attachment to an image. It's about breathing life into an artist's creation (be it sculpture as in the original myth or photography of other people in this case) and falling in love with the person thus created. The emotion is about this virtual human being, not about the real one that served as a model.</p>

<p>Galatea is rather different in the modern context I fear.<br>

Wanting to take advantage of the inferior but beautiful female is the perennial male desire though!</p>