The document is a reflection by a student on their experimental photography project aimed at depicting human emotions. They intended to photograph six basic emotions but found it difficult to capture genuine expressions of emotions other than happiness. Their original photographs did not turn out as planned so they edited the images in Photoshop instead. They used layer effects like multiply and subtract to combine two photos, and changed one image to black and white with a hue blend to depict different emotions. While they were pleased with the effects, they acknowledge the photos of emotions looked fake and could have been improved with better lighting, makeup, and a more cooperative model.

1. Experimental Photography
Shannon
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2. Discovery of Human Emotions
When I took my real photographs I was planning on using for the final images, I don’t
think they turned out as good as these ones so I used my practise photographs instead.
As you can tell from the first slide my original plan did not go as well as I expected to for
several reasons. So I started to play around on Photoshop. As my title was ‘Discovery of
Human Emotions’ I wanted to show different emotions that people will feel. From my
research I found out there are only are six basic emotions of
happiness, sadness, fear, anger, surprise and disgust. The two emotions photographs I
chose for this one is obviously happiness, however I found it hard to get a photograph of
my model looking surprised, disgust, fear and anger because they all looked fake and did
not look legit. So my second photograph shows not much emotion as she has kept a
straight face, I think these were the only two photographs that worked well because her
head is straight on in both however because she leant towards the camera more for the
happiness, it means the faces did not overlap too much and you are able to see her
emotions more. For the happiness photograph I was playing around with the effects and
decided to change the image effect, layer 0, to multiply and changed the no emotion
image, layer 1, to subtract. Although the image has two effects, I think they worked well
with each other because they made one another stand out, for example, the top on layer
1 stands out more which adds colour to image, which I like because it makes it more eye
catching as the colour is quite bright, also it relates to the colour stands for an emotion
as the colour of the top I think is pink, and many people believe pink symbolises
happiness, inner peace and youthfulness. Also because the boarder around the image is
dark and has shadows it stop the eyes wondering off from the faces which I think is good
because the faces are the main point this image so by taking out the background people
are more focused on the actual image. As the image is not simple, it takes people more
time to figure out the faces because after a while your eyes may go weird. I think this
image could be so much better and more professional because I think if the background
was all black would look better because at the moment it looks like there is a glow
behind my model. I also think the emotions could have been better because I think they
look really fake and put on which is what I wanted to avoid but to get someone to show
real emotion when they are not feeling it is really hard. I chose to take the photographs
at night which overall was a bad idea because if I had the light on in the room, it would
create a shadow behind her which I thought look more unprofessional and
messy, however when I turned the light off and out the flash on, her skin became too

4. Discovery of Human Emotions
As I mentioned in the other slide, I turned the flash on and the lights out and her face
became too light, as you can tell from this image. For this effect, I turned the
photographs black and white as the lighting was bad so I did not want it to effect the
overall look of the final image. I then decided to only change one layer effect, to get
this I changed the general blending to hue and then played around with the opacity
until I because happy with how it looked and this was the outcome. I think I could have
improved the image overall, firstly I think if I did her makeup, for example contour and
highlight, it would make her facial features stand out more which I think would
definitely have an impact on the image, however when I did do my models makeup
she refused to have her photographs taken and got all moody, which as she did not
understand would have been the best opportunity to take the anger photograph and
she was definitely not faking it. I also think if I was to change the effect on the other
layer would have made a difference as well as it would add more colour to the
image, however I think by just changing one layer effect makes it slightly easier to see
her emotions. Also by changing the photographs to black and white add making one
layer in colour worked well overall because I think if I left the photograph in colour it
would not have the same effect but as the lighting was the main problem the
photograph would not be as professional. Just like the other image, I chose the same
photographs because I think out of the ones I took, these were the best ones overall
because the emotions are different from each other so you can see the change of
them. I think I could have also made her eyes on the other photograph a light blue
just to make faces more defined because when you concentrate more on the blue
eyes you concentrate more on the no emotion face because your eyes are more drawn
to that face so I think even changing her colour eyes to a different colour which would
then draw attention and divert their eyes to the other face as well.

6. Discovery of Human Emotion
Although many of my photographs were not how I expected them to come out
like I chose the four I think were different and showed some emotion to create
this image. As this image is meant to be 3D, im not sure having the four
photographs in this image will work because many tutorials online have only
used two different photographs so I doubt having four photographs will actually
work, however to get this result I read a tutorial online on how to achieve this
effect as I was not sure at the start, however after finding out it was really easy.
I made each photograph a different layer, I then went onto them and went to
advanced blending, I then unclicked the ‘red’ which gave the 3D effect. I chose
four image for this picture rather than for the other ones because I thought it
would look better with the 3D effect on it. When repositioning the photographs
I was not sure whether or not to move them slightly or to move them a lot as
sometimes when you move them slightly there is a possibility that it may not
work, the same as if you move them a lot, however because I do not own a pair
of 3D glasses I am not really sure whether the effects work or not, which is why
I decided to move two of the image just slightly and the other two quite a lot, I
think I’ll need to get 3D glasses to see if it actually works. Overall I like this
image because of the effect and the colours it has in the image. However I
think this image could be improved mainly because of the photographs I have
taken, I think if the emotions my model was doing did not look as fake I would
be happier with each of the images. I think if I had to redo this whole topic
again I would stick with the title ‘Discovery of Human Emotion’ however I think
I would chose another model as my sister could not really show much emotion.
I was going to have another model, however because they were behind in
college work they were unable to become my model therefore the only person
I would be around enough to take photographs of would be my sister however I
think if she had taken it more seriously and actually listened to what I was
wanting from her, I think the photographs could have turned out much better
but overall I am happy with the effects of the images.