My Shoot: A Day In Our Lives

For this shoot I got a few of my friends together and asked if I could simply follow them around throughout their day. This was successful and I got a lot of photographs. I liked this shoot as I was able to capture different elements of our daily lives that we would maybe ignore or overlook. I wanted to do this photo shoot as I wanted our community to have a look into the lifestyle of teenagers and to get rid of any stigma that us teenagers are faced with. This shows a side of teenagers that is more real and shows how we actually are and what we really get up to instead of what a lot of adults presume we do. I feel that this shoot tells more of a story and allows the spectator to get to know its own community in more of a personal way.

I enjoyed doing this shoot as I was able to just hang out with friends for the day as well as making some interesting photographs. One of the most important parts, to me, is the facial expressions on each of my friends faces within different situations. I like that they were comfortable enough to allow me to make images of them without them posing, fixing their hair or having to see each photo after it had been taken. This was an enjoyable task for me. I really wanted to show what teenagers really get up to in a day and that they don’t run around being destructive and obnoxious. I have also thought of maybe following around this particular group of friends one evening time to see what they get up to at different times of the day. This will be an interesting experiment to try out.

I don’t think that any of these images are stand alone ones as I think that each individual shot comes together to create more of a story and brings more depth into the images themselves. I would put them in sets to create various little stories and then bring each of these little stories together to create the bigger picture. The different facial expressions of my friends make the images more interesting and gives spectators more to look. Something that I have noticed with this particular group of friends is that we are always finding somewhere to sit down and chill out. This group of friends tends to just like to sit around, chill out with one another and chat about anything and everything.

I like these images as I find it interesting to see a teenagers perspective of life and what teens do on a normal day just hanging out. I wanted to show the ups and downs of friendships and having groups of friends that we hang out with on a regular basis. I found that the subjects of these images worked well with not looking to the camera and ignoring it as I am an insider in this group and so they can feel more relaxed and at ease with me making photos of them. I enjoyed this shoot and may do some more shoots in the future of different friendship groups and how they act with one another.

This is one of my favourite images as it shows different emotions within it. This image was an action shot of reactions to making a decision on where to go for food. Obviously it took some time to decide as a lot of the group look bored and fed up. I like the contrast of different emotions, with one person looking so fed up and annoyed [far right] with another subject [far left] enjoying herself and laughing at how annoyed everyone is getting. I think that there is a lot going on in this image and it is interesting to look which I think that the spectator will enjoy to look at and interpret. I feel like the positioning of the subjects is, obviously, very natural and does look like a proper documentary photograph to me. I think that, although this is a part of a series of images, this image could stand alone and make sense to the spectator. However, I would keep this in its set of images as I don’t find this image as interesting when taken out of context. I want to put images from throughout the day together into different emotional states, for example, bored facial expressions would be one set of images. I think this will be interesting for the spectator to see and I want to show different ups and downs that teenagers experience throughout their day.

Another one of my favourite images is this one of my friend, Jamie-Lee. The facial expression gives the spectator a clear indication of what is going on and how she is feeling along with her body language. I really like this image because of its simplicity and how obvious it is. I wanted to capture real emotions on the subjects faces to make it as honest as possible in the terms of documentary photography. I didn’t do anything to change these photographs and don’t think that the subjects acted any different to how they usually would which is exactly what I wanted them to be like.

Sets of emotions

joy/happiness