For this photoshoot, I decided to photograph my both, male and female friends outside. I wanted them girls to pose in a way that they felt was comfortable to them. Above are all of the photos I took from this photoshoot. I decided to pick a day when the weather was snowing as it gave me the perfect opportunity to photograph girls and boys being themselves and show how their personalities and actions differ to express femininity and masculinity in adolescence.

My Favourite Photos

These photos are my favourite photos I took of the girls. Whilst asking them to pose how they could express their own personalities. My models decided to crouch, stand, smile and sit how they felt comfortable. This helped to convey the idea of wanting to feel confident in a photo whilst being surrounded by e.g. flowers. I edited these photos in Adobe Lightroom and increased mostly the:

• Shadows
• Brightness
• Warmth
• Sharpness

This was due to the bright and white colour of the snow reflecting on the camera. Whilst adjusting my camera settings I also had to focus on increasing the aperture. I increased my aperture to f/8 and the ISO to 200. This is because my camera’s light meter will see the bright snow as too much light which will cause it to underexpose my photos and and leave the snow looking a dull grey colour.

These photos are my favourite photos I took of the boys. I also asked them to pose how they could express their own personalities. However, they decided to pose whilst engaging with each other and having fun, which contrasts from the girls and how standing and smiling for the picture was more important that continuing what they are doing and enjoying their activities whilst being photographed. This method of photographing both girls and boys and seeing how they react, perfectly highlighted the theory of both gender’s usual qualities. For example, women tend to score higher than men on personality traits. These traits consist of agreeableness, openness to experience, conscientiousness, neuroticism, and extroversion. Women also mostly have a higher amount of traits of anxiety and sympathy, while men tend to be more assertive and risk-taking. This was shown through how they adapted to being photographed doing what they want to do.

In this photo, I asked a male and a female to pose how they felt comfortable with. The female model chose to smile, with a soft expression. This immediately creates a sociable, delightful impression of happiness, joy and content, which is usually the expression a teenage female will choose when they are being photographed. This is due to the fact smiling is seen as a way to capture a happy memory and socially acceptable behaviour. Women usually want to be seen as having a good time and possibly even putting on a facade that they are enjoying themselves to e.g. keep up a social status as fun and sociable.

The male model chose to not smile and have a more neutral or serious expression. This immediately creates an impression of masculinity and that serious face communicates strength and independence. It is said that many men throughout the world do not want to show any elements of vulnerability or joy that others can easily read meanings to, so a genuine smile is rare in a photo of adolescent boys, especially in solo photographs, due to social hierarchy of men on social media.

This photo would be my favourite image out of all, due to the fact of the contrast between the immediate reactions between males and females when being photographed, however the image is slightly blurry and therefore brings down the quality of the photo, to improve this, next time I will increase my shutter speed, this will help me to get a sharper images, without including any motion blur. I decided to attempt to remove the blur of the photo as much as I can in Adobe Lightroom however I did not succeed with a high quality image.