Category: Smile

This week in class we were asked to take two pictures of a person. One with them smiling and one with them not. This project was very interesting to do. It was very hard to find strangers that would allow you to take their photo and also very awkward asking them, especially when they said no. That is why I choose to do most picture of my family because I knew they would say yes and it was very easy to take a picture of them over the holidays. When I asked people not to smile, they sometimes looked scary and intimating but once they smile there happy friendly side began to show. This shows that it is important to smile everyday so you are portrayed as a friendly person instead of a person no one wants to walk up to. This has helped me as a photographer to see how people can be seen different when really they are the same person. Also, this has helped me see how stereotypes affect the world. Below is the link to all my photos and my favorite one I took. 

  https://photos.app.goo.gl/KW2epDThVGtG0V233

 Click here to see my gallery.

This project was okay, but no where near as fun as some of the other projects we have completed during this semester.  In my opinion the smile photos project did not allow for as much creativity as projects like the 24 colors project or the light graffiti project.  It was kind of awkward going up to random people asking to take their picture, watching them think about it, explain the project and then taking the pictures.   It was very time consuming to enter every picture into google slides, crop them, and then make sure the two pictures were lined up in the middle of the page. 

When I asked people to wear a neutral un-smiling face, they sometimes looked intimidating or un-friendly.  On the contrary when the the subjects were asked to smile the lit up and appeared open and friendly.  This project shows how important it is to smile everyday and advertise yourself as a happy, positive and friendly person.  As a photographer, I have also learned to fairly portray my subjects in the pictures I take.  If I can fairly show my subjects then they will be free of stereotypes and generalizations.

link to pictures: https://photos.app.goo.gl/jV7QYcfBG6nAkUUh1

This past week in class we were assigned an assignment called Smile. For this project we were told to go around during Winter Break and take 15 pictures of people smiling and then 15 more of those same people not smiling. The point of this project was to see how your opinion changes of someone when they smile verse when their not smiling. Overall, on some of the pictures that I took, my opinion on the person did change but, on most of the pictures my opinion didn’t change because the people looked the same in both pictures. For example, in the picture on the left, this lady doesn’t look like the person that I would want to approach and start a conversation with because she has a straight face on and it’s not the most inviting face. However, in the picture on the right, I would gladly walk up to this person and start a conversation with her. This is because her smile looks very welcoming and she looks very bright which makes you think that she will be happy to talk to you. If you click the link at the top of the screen you can see all the pictures I took. And on some of those people I was a little nervous to approach because they didn’t look very inviting. But, they turned out to be super nice. Overall, on this project I learned that you shouldn’t judge someone based on how they look at first glance, you should get to know them so that you know the real them.