Ava Quincy: A Senior Profile Portrait by Kateryna Fomenko (2011)

My character's name is Ava Quincy, an Australian baker and entrepreneur. She's ignorantly optimistic, despite being very unlucky. She's so focused on making her business a success that she never has time to do anything else or really live her life. Ever since she was a child, cooking was the only thing that she could ever do correctly; therefore she stuck with it even as it slowly began to take over her life. At the time when the photo was taken, Ava had experienced yet another confrontation with bad luck as her oven had exploded, leaving her covered in frosting and flour, and with a broken oven. Yet, despite her bad luck she is still able to decorate the cake happily and forget about all her troubles as she focuses on the success of her cake. In the photo, my character is wearing a chef's outfit with an apron to represent both what her life is centered around, and quite literally, her everyday clothing attire. She is a chef, she must wear the chef's uniform; likewise, she spends all her time cooking and spends most of her time in chef's clothing. Her face and hands are spotted with bits of frosting and flour to represent her unluckiness and also show the results of the oven's explosion. However, despite these bits of dirt around her, she is still perfectly content decorating the cake. This shows her optimism as well as her love for cooking. She is also surrounded by complete darkness which represents her bad luck and misfortunes; however, despite everything that may be in the darkness, she is completely oblivious to it as she is happily decorating the cake in the spotlight.