Photography and Text by Kaleb Germinaro, Copyright 2016
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EMOTION
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When first assigned with this project I had a hard time visualizing how I would display emotion in a fashion that observers would be able to 1. Identify the emotion 2. Empathize with the emotion being shown while displaying it in a creative way. In the process of trying to figure out how to compose my photos and what I would have the subjects do in the photo. I came to the conclusion that emotions are shown in the face and hands and they are most natural when spontaneous. With this in mind I decided to show only the face and hands of an individual, if they chose to use them, since this is where I see emotion most vividly. I decided to go with a black and white edit, because I find that colors tend to be distracting at times especially in the context of emotion that I’m trying to illuminate. The black and white images tends to display emotion in a more dramatic and effective way than color as well. There were many similarities and conclusions that I came up with during this process.
During set up I found out the closeness of photographing only someone’s face close up was intimate in that the subjects were okay with being vulnerable. I believe that led to the quality and real emotions that I was able to get out of my subjects. Vulnerability was the biggest thing I noticed out of this experience. The fact that someone was willing to sit 4 feet away from me with my camera in their face while I was taking a photo of them blows my mind. Even though all these people are beautiful and friends of mine, it was still incredible to see how they exhibited different emotions.
As far as the process goes for the set up of the photos, I had them sit down under a light that was in accordance with their face and I had my camera set up on a tripod a few feet away from them. I would then tell them the project itself and somewhat of what I was looking for. Then I gave them the emotion I was looking to capture. These four emotions were Happiness, Despair, Sadness and Love. What I noticed throughout this process was that Love and Happiness are very similar for some people, also that Love has a particularly different look for different people. Despair was the hardest emotion for my models to figure out because it is an emotion that encompasses a lot of feelings. Throughout this process and post-production I found myself editing my pictures in a similar way that some headshots of Marilyn Monroe were taken back in the 50’s. I’m not sure if that influenced my process or not but it was cool to discover the connection.
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About The Author: Kaleb Germinaro is a senior enrolled in the College of the University of Pennsylvania, Class of 2017.
