For our third assignment, the task was to take four portrait photographs, focusing on experimenting with lighting, composition, form and the pose of the subjects.  The images didn’t have to be linked, and we could interpret the brief in any way we wanted.

I struggled for quite a while to come up with an idea, as the brief was quite broad.  Although this was a good thing (because it gave us freedom to explore our creativity), I had no idea where to start.  Eventually, I began thinking about emotions and how people portray their emotions within photographs.  I thought about “selfie culture” and how, currently, a lot of photos involve the subject having a straight face or lacking emotion.  I wanted to try and challenge this by attempting to capture genuine emotion and happiness within a photograph.