Arthur Labrains: A Narrative Character Portrait by Eva Koujikov (2015)

My character is teenage zombie named Arthur Labrains, a shy and reserved high school outcast who carries a thesaurus to help him communicate with others. Arthur is disliked by his peers because they cannot accept his differences and is thus unable to make friends. Eventually Arthur meets Abby, who is able to look past his physical attributes and see him for who he really is, a compassionate young man. The moment I have captured in my photo is a close up of Arthur holding his thesaurus and staring intimidatingly at one of his peers. I wanted Arthur to look a bit menacing because I wanted my photo to capture the point of view of people who cannot look past Arthur's appearance.

My final shot is of Arthur staring directly into the camera to instill an intimidated feeling in whoever views this piece. To make my character look bigger and more menacing I shot from a slightly lower angle and positioned my character close to the lens so he would tower over the camera, creating a towering effect. Also, to make him look like a zombie I put white make-up all over my model's face, which I desaturated later to make his skin look dead. Using the studio for the first time was a bit frightening, but after the first couple of shots I felt confident using the equipment. However, the lights were difficult to figure out because at points during the shoot they wouldn't go off and my photos would turn out dark. I figured out this was because the bulbs in the lights were dying so to cope with the issue I waited for longer time intervals before I took each photo so the bulbs would flash.