A Burning Feeling: A Junior Narrative Diptych by Justin Walker (2013)

My Diptych depicts an image from my graphic novel. The story behind this scene is that of my main character, Heath Louis, and him dealing with the aspect of moving on and not succumbing to nostalgia from his past experiences. Heath learns that the past is dragging him down and limiting his opportunities for the future. I express this in my Diptych by showing an individual sitting solemnly contemplating his life and reflecting on his past.This is the conflict. The photo adjacent to it is the resolution, in which my character decides to leave his past behind, make something of himself and start looking forward to what the future might hold for him. Making the narrative Diptych was a lot more enjoyable than when I made the self portrait Diptych because it was the first time I got to use models in my photos. I used my friend, Cameron, as a model to help express the story that inspired my Diptych. Using models gave the project a whole other angle to photography. I had to tell my model exactly how to pose and what type of facial expressions to make, whether I want their head looking down or up, where I want their feet to be placed, etc. I needed to tell them precisely what I wanted or else I wasn't going to like how my photo would come out. One of the major problems I ran into with my diptych photos was that they were too blurry to be used. Although I had the angle and position I wanted in the end they came out too visually obscured to work. I had to retake both photos using a different model and had to fiddle around with the settings on the DSLR camera in order to produce photos that were clear.