Hunting for Humor

My adventure to find and photograph laughter was much harder than I was anticipating. I was expecting to get a flawless picture of a group of people laughing. Instead, my pictures turned out to be far from perfect. It was difficult to photograph a group of people laughing without them knowing about it, but also not be totally creepy.

My hunt for laughter took me to Sweet Sammies and the Super Target on Saturday night. I dragged my roommate (pictured below) to come along with me so I did not look like a totally crazy person. We first went to Sweet Sammies and we sat there for about 30 minutes while I tried to sneakily take a picture of laughter. However, I did not get great footage. Other than my poor attempt to take a photo of the two girls laughing behind me by taking a selfie (pictured below), I had come up empty handed.

My first (and failed) attempt to photograph humor

My roommate Tori, smiling for the camera

As a result, my roommate and I drove across the street to the Super Target. We walked around the store for around 15 minutes while I attempted to get some photos of people laughing. Although I did not get any action shots of people laughing, I was able to get a picture of a mom and her daughters shopping together. In my pictures, it looks as if they were talking, however, within their conversation before and after my picture was taken, they were joking and laughing. I was able to eavesdrop on what they were talking about.


 Photo of mother and daughter

  First attempt to photograph mother and daughters

The mother and two daughters were looking at the women’s clothing section and a lot of their conversation was cheerful and playful. The three ladies joked around with each other and laughed about it. At one point, one daughter picked out a dress that was hideous and teased about how she thought her sister should wear it. The three of them thought it was hilarious because because the dress was so atrocious. I also found that laughter seemed to be contagious between the mother and daughters. Whenever one of the ladies would start to laugh, the other two would think that the comment was funny and let out a chuckle. Overall, it appeared as if the ladies were lighthearted and easy-going. A large part of what made them laugh was focused around making fun of themselves and not taking everything too seriously.