The Gallery - Expressions

I never realised until I started trying to find a suitable photo for this week's Gallery prompt of "Expressions" how little variation there in the expressions of the people that I photograph. Largely, that's the children. This may have something to do with the fact that my children learnt to pose from a very young age and break into huge smiles whenever there is a whiff of a camera in the nearby vicinity. The range of expressions therefore goes from happy ones, through a few bemused blank ones from the baby years and in the rest, they are asleep.

But I did manage to find one that stuck from the rest, which is good or you would have got a rogues' gallery full of cheesy grins.

I took this photograph when I took the children to a friend's party. Missy Woo is about 15 months old. At the party, they were doing face painting for all the children. Several of the boys chose to have their faces painted as Spiderman. Unfortunately, every time Missy Woo saw one of them near her, her face crumpled in terror and she started wailing and crying. Every time I'd get her calmed down, one of them would pop up again next to her. Eventually, the boys moved away to play a game or bounce on a bouncy castle and I put her on a rocking horse - one of her favourite toys - to settle her down. She calmed down but as you can see, the terror that afternoon was never completely far away and she was completely on her guard. I could have tried all day and all night to get a smile and I don't think I would have got one. She looks like she could dissolve into tears at any moment, doesn't she?