Photo Portrait Girl Crying

I get asked to photograph a great variety of interesting things but normally the brief is the same, make them look as nice as possible. So, once in a while it’s fun to try my hand at the opposite.

This art student came to me for a photo which made her look sad. After a few shots I realized that I was going to have to do something drastic as she was looking more like a pouty model than sad. So I went to the science lab and borrowed a bottle of glycerine and an eye dropper to make some tears. Glycerine is great for this as it is quite thick and viscose so it runs down fairly slowly.

I got her to tilt her head back and dropped some glycerine into her eyes then, when I was ready with the camera, she tilted her head forward and we got instant tears.

We smudged her makeup a bit and she dug deep into her acting ability and suddenly we were getting something quite realistic.