There are very few photos I have taken where the viewer can truly get a sense of what the subject was feeling at the moment the photograph was taken. Sure, I have lots of photos that convey a little emotion, but I aspire to have a photograph that radiates raw emotion. In the honest emotion photo assignment, I attempted to do just that.

I struggled to be able to capture any moments out in the general public either because I 1)didn’t have my camera with me 2)was in a hurry to get from point A to point B and couldn’t stop to get a shot. I decided instead to capture moments as they happened in my own day to day life rather than the lives of other strangers.

I photographed Zara Wiley, a close friend of mine who has appeared in past assignments. Zara and I were messing around and trying yoga poses that we found challenging or intriguing, and I saw perfect photo opportunities when one of us would make an amusing mistake or simply laugh at our own weaknesses when it came to certain yoga poses.

As I mentioned, there were multiple instances where I saw the opportunity for a decent photograph but didn’t have my camera on me. In this case, as in the photo above, I had only my phone to work with (which can be nearly as nice as a DSLR with today’s technology). Some friends of mine were gazing curiously at the marine critters around the docks of Friday Harbor on an Juan Island. I was standing on a boardwalk above them and noticed a moment of bonding over the anemones that attached themselves to the underwater wood of the dock they were on.

Noticing little moments throughout your day can make for rewarding photos and it made me pay attention to the smaller relationships that exist between people when we just don’t notice it.