Exercise 5: Eye-contact and Expression

For this exercise I persuaded a friend who does our building work to sit for me in the relaxed informal surroundings of our conservatory. I began to take photographs of him straight away and more as he relaxed whilst we were chatting. Later I asked him to look away from the camera as I continued to take pictures.





In the image on the left Bill has just arrived and has yet to adjust to the camera and, although he is happy to look into the camera he is not yet relaxed. In the next two pictures we have begun chatting about some building work he was going to doing for us and he is beginning to relax more. His expression on the right, though, is much more flattering.

In these three pictures we are happily chatting to each other whilst I take photographs and he has become used to the camera. I particularly like the first two as there is good facial expression as he becomes more animated and there is good eye contact. In the right hand image he is still animated but he has glanced away and the picture loses some intimacy.


For the final three photos I asked Bill to continue the conversation but look away from the camera and here we have a completely different disinterested atmosphere.