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Photography, Text and Video Interview by Linda Ruan, Copyright 2017
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FROM THE BEGINNING TO THE END
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I have only seen her several times in school before I really got a chance to know her. My impression of her has always been that there is a sense of sadness on her face. When Professor Tony asked; why I wanted to choose her as my subject, I simply replied: “she is pretty but she looks sad.”
The theme of this assignment is to capture four human emotions: love, happiness, sadness, and despair. The idea of the beginning and end of romance immediately came up to me as I saw the instruction. We were all happy when we first approached to love, yet, as time passes, we started to notice the negative sides of each other and realized that we might not be a perfect match. Followed by the realization arouses sorrow. There would also be times when we thought that we would never walk out of the shadow of that person. However, we would all get over it one day, and when that day came, we would return to our original state again- happiness. From the beginning to the end, time heals us.
Speaking of the overall process of the photo shoot, I found the hardest part is to capture the real emotions of the subject. Before I started to shoot her, I told her what I wanted from her. However, she was not in the mood because pretension of emotions would not yield a good result. Yet, since I mentioned earlier that she looks sad, I found the emotion of sadness and despair easy to capture for she did not need to pretend it. I only simply asked her to smoke the way as she always does and to look at one point without having another thought of it and the results of those emotions turned out great.
Nevertheless, she felt awkward when I wanted to take pictures of her laughing. To overcome this awkwardness, I started some chill conversation with her and made her relax and made some jokes. She then eventually laughed and I captured those. Since the moments of those emotions are ephemeral, I did not pay too much attention to the overall position and frame of the pictures.
Yet, as a photography lover, true emotions of my subject are the most important things for me to capture.
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About The Author: Linda Ruan is a sophomore enrolled at Bryn Maur College, Class of 2019.