What is point of taking photos? What is the real essence in photo? What make a photo nice? How to behave/act when being shot?
We might wanna try to act this or that way to have a nice photo while sometimes trying to smile and of course pretending to smile. And then it comes to the question “what’s the point of taking a photo”. Personally I believe a photo is a capture of both the person and the environment he/she is in. By a person here, it really refers to his real feeling or emotion at the time being. What’s the point of pretending to smile while you were not happy enough to smile? Or is it a social preconditioning that you are expected to smile while being shot? For a photo is a capture, why not let it be capture of a real things? Sometimes later in your life when you want to see those photos again, you will feel some lively emotions in there, the emotions which were being captured during the old times.
Here it comes to the term emotion. I believe emotion is the key and most important ingredient that makes a photo lively and beautiful. No matter you were angry, upset, happy, or whatsoever, allowing those true emotions to be captured does make much sense than trying to just give a pretending smile.
For so long I have wondered how to act nicely when being shot. And I realize that I was also wrong for long ago with the definition of nice. “Nice”, I had refer to stylish, creative, funny…But it is not! No matter how nice you act, you still cant get a good photo. And a good photo here I do refer to the one with a feeling inside, a real emotion inside the photo which make you act naturally good to be shot. Comparing two photos of the one who know that he’s being shot and another who doesn’t. The difference is the later looks more lively and beautiful. It is because he doesn’t pretend!
This phenomenon really applies to real life in which you can see the difference between people who do things from the inside heart and the one who pretend to do stuff or try to do stuff while he doesn’t really want to but forced to do such under external expectation.
17/7/2011, HKU
