Paul Ekman

In the group crit the other day, it was suggested that I look at the work by psychologist Paul Ekman, and his micro expressions. Although not a photographer, his work is very interesting and could be useful to what I am doing.
All of these stills are frames from films, and show split second micro expressions of extreme emotions.



These six images above look great; the facial expressions are really strong and intense, which makes for good effect. For Ekman though, this was not realy his intention, and instead he used micro expressions in psychology tests to see if suicide patients were lying about being well. He found that at the point of the lie, there was an intense expression on the face, something that the patient could never hide. That is what I find so interesting; the truth of the expression, something that the person can't hide, and something where if you look hard enough and for long enough, you will eventually see it.


'Surprise'

Technicaly I like these images, the crop and framing is really good, as he is able to get really close in (perhaps almost too close) and really concentrate on the facial expression and emotion being shown. I think that shooting portrait, rather than landscape works particualrly well, and is something that I want to experiment with on my next shoot.


'Happiness'

In Ekmans images, these self portraits, he is showing us varying types of emotion and how they look. For my next shoots though I want to focus in particlar on feelings of discomfort and awkwardness, and like Ekman shoot to capture the precise moment of the intense emotion.


'Fear'


'Disgust'