Narrative Character Portrait: A Narrative Character Portrait by Karna Chelluri (2015)

My character's name is James Palmer. He is a young stockbroker who works at a Wall Street investment firm. James' boss doesn't respect him because of his age and therefore refuses to authorize any decisions that James tries to make. James grows tired of being denied the ability to make decisions, so he takes a risk and signs off on a document without his boss's permission. Although his boss finds out, and initially threatens to have him fired, he proves his aptitude by closing a deal which is worth a record sum of money and wins his boss's respect. The moment that I have captured in my photograph is the time when James leaves his boss's office after being denied permission to make an executive decision yet another time.

I captured the shot by using the camera in the Freestyle photography studio. I positioned the camera so that I could capture most of my character's body, doing this allowed me to photograph his body language fully. In order to portray that my character was a businessman, I had him wear formal clothing, but in order to show that he was hard at work, I had him loosen his tie and untuck his shirt. I also had him carry his coat with him so that it looked like he was leaving his boss's office. The combination of his facial expression and his outfit are meant to get the viewer to feel as if he had been working hard, but ultimately failed at what he had been working towards. After the photoshoot, I put the photograph into Adobe Photoshop to add a cooling filter and a vignette. I did this to intensify the feeling of sorrow that that is being portrayed to the viewer.