Artist Statement: A Narrative Character Portrait by Talya Abkowitz (2015)

My character is a young teenage girl. She is a reserved introvert who takes chances in every situation. The story I am telling is of a girl who likes this boy but the boy doesn't like her back. She tries many times to give the boy gifts but she can't win him over. Finally, she is so sad that she just sits down and cries. Little does she know a different boy has been watching her all along and likes her. He comes to give her flowers and they spend the rest of the day together in pure bliss. The moment I have captured through my photo is when the first boy has rejected her and she is feeling very gloomy.

I captured the shot by using a DSLR camera in the studio at Freestyle. I took the shot from a head on angle. Although I shot many photos, all from different angles, I felt like the head on shot really helped to show the emotion my character was feeling. I decided not to use any props to show how simple of a person she is but also because I felt like for the emotion I was trying to portray they would have been distracting. I had my actor wear a small amount of makeup to show that she is a teenager. I encountered a few problems with getting the lighting to be exactly how I wanted. But after adjusting the lights and how they lit up my character I was happy with the final outcome. Finally, to put the finishing touches on my photo, in Photoshop I put a vignette effect on the photo as well as some simple edits to the actors hair and clothes.