Phone Reactions

In the photos that I took, I tried to show that when people get text messages that their faces change. Whether the text be a cute one from your significant other, a text that makes no sense at all, or maybe even a text that is completely dumb. However, because this was a fiction project I had to ask the people to look at their phones and act like they are responding to a text. When I told people to make a face reacting to a text, some were unsure and did not know what to do, some even refused to participate in my project. Most of my participants were good sports and made some great faces, but others seemed to just look at their phones and be Debby Downers. That is okay though, because for some of the faces I was able to catch made up for the plain Jane faces.

I tried to capture the emotions that can come out while reading a text. However, this was a little more difficult than I thought it would be. I did not just want pictures that were face on and looking straight at the subject. I wanted to get the phone in the photo and see the reaction as well. At first I started taking pictures at different angles from above and below, but then I realized that when I am photographing from above the subject I cannot fully see their reaction but I can see that there is no text on the phone. Therefore, it would not actually work for my project. I continued to take pictures, but instead I tried to get below my subjects for from angles that I could see the reaction but not see the screen of the phone.

When I first started this project I was trying to capture my dogs like they were fighting over a cardboard sub and chips, a sign I took home from work with me from Subway. They were going to both be licking the food, but then my Yorkie was going to start a fight with my Sheltie and end up killing her. I was excited to try to capture this, but when it came time to take the photos my dogs would not cooperate with me. The Sheltie loves the camera and just wants to be happy in front of it, while the Yorkie gets scared and runs. That's when I came up with the reactions to the texts. I decided to put a phone in front of the dogs to see what they'd do. I even put a piece of sausage on my phone to get my dog to look like she was looking at it! I got the scared expression from my Yorkie while she hid under the table and I quick put my phone in front of her to get the picture. This is how my new idea for my project started out. Funny what can become inspirational.