For this contrast I wanted to do something a little different then the obvious and came up the idea of something a little more personal to me in the use of emotions. Happy – High, Sad – Low. 

I had a friend, Gina, volunteer to model for me, and my plan was to have her watch a movie that contained both funny and sad scenes, and then take shots candidly as she reacted to them. 

The shoot was a fairly simple set-up. Gina made herself comfortable and sat back to watch the film. I positioned myself out the way as much as I could, and placed the camera on a tripod. 

I needed to use a high ISO to get a sharp shot in the available light. Flash was not really an option as I didn’t really want to distract Gina from the film. My thoughts being that the more engrossed she was in the movie, the more relaxed she would be. Therefore her reactions would be more natural. 

The biggest problem was simply that Gina was understandably self conscious about being in front of the camera – especially as she was aware that the shoot was about capturing her reactions to emotional scenes. Because of this she never really relaxed as much as I hoped she would be able to, and so her expressions are a little more constrained then I’d hoped to capture. 

I’m really grateful that she gave it a go, as I know I probably wouldn’t want to be on the other end of the camera. I’m also sure that the idea is a good one and could produce interesting results.