Eye contact and expression - planning

My plans for this project were influenced by my experience at a studio photography workshop in May 2011 organized by my local photography club. My efforts at directing the models were largely unsuccessful because I had not decided beforehand what sort of photographs I wanted to take. Furthermore, whilst I asked the models to change their gaze towards and away from the camera, this was a scatter-gun approach, without any clear idea of how these changes would visually effect the picture.

I decided to use this project, together with projects 6 (sequence) and 8 (posture) to experiment with different options.

For this purpose, I wanted to be the model for this project, so that I could see for myself the situation from the models viewpoint. I also decided to use photographic lighting instead of natural daylight like the previous projects.

I planned to explore various ideas:-

1. Changing directions of gaze as if the subject were totally alone and without any express emotions: what is the visual effect of these changes?

2. Changing expressions of emotion: could suggest to the model a sort of role play:

- on hearing bad news: head maybe lowered?

- watching passers-by: neutral and candid glance?

- greeting a close friend or VIP: showing anticipation or even excitement?

- feelings of anger/exasperation?

In these, the model would pretend that there is someone else in view, but not visible to the camera. I thought that such role-play might be a way of communicating to a model ideas for expressions.

3. As an alternative, I thought I could ask the model to talk on a mobile phone again expressing a range of emotions.

On this topic, I was interested to read in someone's blog that Nadav Kander in his photographs of White House staff and Richard Avedon were unwilling to provide direction to the people they photographed. They expected the people to compose themselves as they wished to be seen. I was also struck by a portfolio of portraits of computer game players. A few had blank expressions, but others showed high drama of elation and excitement.

Using myself as the model in this project 5 meant that I would be unable to practice keeping eye contact with the model. However, I plan to use someone else as a model in subsequent projects once I have a better idea of what I want them to do, so I will cover this part of the project elsewhere.