Happiness is an emotion felt by someone who experiences frequent positive emotions such as joy and interest. When first thinking about the word happy, I was immediately drawn to memories from my childhood. As I child, I remember having so much fun everyday. I had no worries about school or relationships. Thinking back on my childhood, I remember always wanting to grow up. Now that I am almost in college and life is becoming more real, I sometimes want to go back to the days when I was younger.

 

In my photograph, I wanted to portray teenagers acting like children. There are three characters doing childlike things in the photo. A happy memory from my childhood was always going outside and playing in my backyard with my neighbors. At my house I had a swingset that all the neighbors would play. In the photo, you see all characters laughing and smiling as kids do. The male character is pretending to throw the ball at the girl character with a childlike look on his face. Next, the female character on the left is standing on one of the swings. I remember doing this as a kid because it made me feel big like adults.

 

During the process of this photo, I came upon a few issues. While capturing the pictures, I found it hard to make the teenage characters look childlike without them looking cheesy. A few photos on my contact sheet look very staged. However, after trying different locations and telling my characters to just act like kids and have fun, the pictures came much stronger. I wanted the lighting to be bright and colorful because that mood is what I associate with my childhood.