Odd One Out: A Junior Narrative Diptych by Haley Jones (2013)

For my diptych, I wanted to capture the feelings of a character I created in an English essay. This girl was a little out of the ordinary and had trouble making friends and finding a date to homecoming. In order to communicate how this girl felt, I took two pictures of her alone. In the picture on the left, she is at school surrounded by her peers yet still sitting at a lunch table by herself. This picture represents her struggle to make friends and gives the sense that she has given up. The picture on the right shows the girl sitting alone in her house. This represents a struggle she is facing internally; she is upset and worried that she will not get a date to homecoming because she is not worthy of one. I chose to make the picture on the left to be in color to show how others view her. The picture on the right is in black-and-white in order to represent how she feels about herself. I added the burnt edge effect to this picture in order to concentrate the light on her. This gives the sense that she is under a spotlight and feels pressured to conform to society in order to fit in. While I was taking these photos, I had a few challenges. The first was when I was taking the photo of the girl at the school, people in the background would look at the camera. Another challenge I faced was when I was taking the photo of the girl inside. I knew I wanted light to be directly on her to get the feeling she was under a spotlight however, the light was too harsh and washed her face out. To solve this issue, I put a piece of cloth over the light.