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Sony Forums Challenges | all galleries >> Challenge 103: Feel the Emotions (hosted by Stéphane Bouchard) >> Challenge 103: Eligible > edit image
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October 13, 2005 Fremiet

7th Place
The Windows of the Soul?
Fremiet

In this composite, I invite you to consider the title. I have often wondered about how true this is. Do our eyes themselves really reflect the emotional aspect of our souls? This piece is an experiment, one small look at a very big question, and I'm not really sure it gives a clear answer. The photo is the result of my experiment.
I asked for a student volunteer at my school. A student who has always been authentic and direct in her dealings with me came forward. I told her I was going to ask her to meditate on a particular emotion, to think of things which would generate that emotion. As she got in touch with it, she had her eyes closed and was instructed to open them when the feelings were really cookin'. At that point I took a close up pic of her face, mouth to forehead. I did this four times for each emotion (FEAR, ANGER, JOY).
Once I had the pics taken I had to decide how much of the face to include (eyebrows, mouth, forehead, the furrow lines between the eyes etc.), I decided that anything other than the eyes themselves would detract from the essential question which was about EYES. I therefore cropped the eyes the way you see and brought them closer than they actually were. I faded in some of the background to give a hint of context and that's it! Thought you might like to check it out. FYI, I think I see more of these emotions in the thumbnail than in the full size image. If that's true, what can we take from it? Comments welcomed!!


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Sony Forums Challenges17-Oct-2005 10:48
John: A point nicely and gently made. Thanks. John
John Dunn 17-Oct-2005 09:19
Your pic inspired this Haiku:
The eyes are windows
Not where the soul can be seen
But where it peeks out
John Potter17-Oct-2005 01:48
No question the anger one is the noisiest and the least obvious. My mistake was to enlarge the eyes which were taken from farther back, using free transform. What I should have done was to reduce the others....which I still might do, with a couple of other tweaks...this is a very cool process for me. Tomorrow I might do this with another person and see how that goes.....as always, if I have the time.
stephane bouchard17-Oct-2005 00:07
What an unusual way to translate emotions on picture. Eyes are opened windows on our soul and this is how I understand your work: focus on the eyes to guess what emotion is.
Anger’s eyes aren’t working with me, there’s something missing to believe it. They also are the noisiest from the group and I dislike this amount of noise.
It was another great idea from you Fremiet.
-Stéphane