Pain

[mikem12188]

My wife thinks I've gone over to the dark side, but pain is just as important an emotion as is happiness. Please let me know what you think.

Thanks.

[clockdoc]

Probably not one of the best expressions she will want to be remembered for but it looks more like sadness than pain in her face. The onboard flash flattened any facial modeling and tended to wash out tone in her skin. You were fortunate that the flash did not cause huge reflections in her glasses.

[jiminyClickit]

mikem12188,

What do I think of the photo? The washed-out look can be improved, the triangle of highlights brought under control, and bits of light background dealt with. For a photo taken nearly three years ago, assuming pre-DPS, it's pretty good.

Is pain as important as happiness? Emotion is an indication of inner feeling, thoughts. I wouldn't begin to know how to rate them. This expression appears more apathetic than pained, but I would not consider photographing a person with that expression. It looks on the verge of turning to anger.

On the other hand, you didn't say she was feeling the pain. You tagged it "suffering" as well, so I see a puzzle.

[mikem12188]

clockdoc, I think the washed out look may have been done by my post processing, since I tried something new. I had the same thought after I was done, but didn't know if it was just me.

jiminy, very perceptive about the look on her face. And yes, it's still a puzzle to me and mom.

[tufcat]

mikem,

I think the shot is interesting. Like Jiminy said, I probably wouldn't have taken that shot, but you did. We all come here to look at each other's pictures and gain perspective. It's a unique shot and it is real (even if it is from the "dark side").

I think emotion is a perspective thing too. We don't always just feel just one emotion. Most of the time we experience multiple emotions. To me, this picture has a kind of pain/building anger/sadness look...

Sort of a ("You made a "D" on your report card, so I'm going to take your cell phone away for three months") look.

Now that's real pain.