I've recently decided that for my career I'd like to be a photographer. I'd like to capture people in certain emotions and try to make sure that these feelings are strong and clear. Any suggestions?

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Yeah, they actually ahve to be feeling the emotion. No one looks as good posed as unposed. I do have a trick, though that works for my photography for emotion.

I'll tell the model I'm doing it as an exercise, but I'll have them summon up some emotion, like anger, to think of something that makes them angry, and make an angry face. Here's the trick: when asked, people will make a face that they think LOOKS angry, not necessarily will they look like they actually do when they're angry.

Just as you're asking them to relax and stop doing the angry face, snap the photo...wince they're not expecting it, they'll be stuck halfway in between...this is a great way to capture their natural face and look, but give it a little bit more of an emotional edge. Also, try to read a person's eyes right away...sometimes people have a naturally aggressive, melancholy, or glittering look in their eyes. The best thing to do is encourage them to relax and look whichever way is natural.

The emotion trick works for these people too...get the person who has a naturally sad look in his eyes to laugh at a joke, to smile...of course the smile will look cheesy. Act like your done taking the picture and make a joke, then as he starts to laugh, snap the picture. The worst thing you can do is make someone smile when they don't want to. Making them want to is the true art of photographing people.

Try giving your models all kinds of emotions to try, too...everyone thinks of angry, sad, and happy, but what does someone look like when they're demurring, or ecstatic, or tired, or stressed out. Believe it or not, these can be fun emotions to try to capture on film. Models even have a hard time looking dead or asleep on film, which seems like they'd be some of the easiest looks to do.

Another thing: even objects have personality, but not every photographer will able to capture it all on film. Try looking at objects as personalities, too, try to capture an emotion in a tree branch or a pool of water...if you can make emotional reactions happen here, then when you work with people with actual emotions, you'll do much better.

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