Advanced Portrait Study

Advanced Portrait Study

Part A

1) Alter your perspective

2) Looking Off Camera/Off Frame

3) Looking Within the Frame

4) Experiment With Lighting

5) Get Your Subject Out of Their Comfort Zone

6) The Candid

7) Get a Smile

Contact Sheet - 112 images

Part B

Left, Right, Front...

Front

Right

Left

The theory that the left side of the face shows more emotion proved to be true in my portraits. I chose to capture a moody emotion, and I believe in the photo of the subject's left side of her face, there is an added tonal element of sadness, that is less obvious in the other two, In the other two, she could just be grumpy and squinting her eyes, however in the final image (left side of the face) there is something subtle which emotes a more sad or pensive expression and perhaps this is indeed the visible signs of the right, emotional side of the brain controlling the left side of the body and face, like the articles suggest. However, this is definitely not an empirical study - there is no control of extraneous variables to convince me of its reliability. 

To be more convinced of the validity of the theory, I would need to know exactly what parts of the brain control the facial muscles when emoting specific facial expressions, and whether or not there are more of these parts in the right side of the brain or something.