Leona: A Narrative Character Portrait by Kevin Huang (2015)

My character is a teenage girl named Leona. She spends most of her time alone as she was abandoned by her parents at a young age and forced to live self reliantly. As a result, she strives for the love and compassion of those around her but the fear of abandonment that is cemented into her heart often dictate her actions. In my character portrait, I have captured the moment she has after writing up a love letter directed at a boy that attends her high school named Phil. This is a moment of focus where she is reading over the letter but also a moment of fear where she thinks back to all the pain that she has suffered. When capturing the shot, I used a low amount of light to create a grim atmosphere. For this shot, the only prop that was used was a piece of binder paper which was the love letter. I had my model, Zippy, dress up and do her make up as she normally would to capture a shot of a normal teenage girl. When we were shooting, we encountered problems with the camera which wasted a good amount of the time we were given to shoot. Luckily we were able to get a bunch of great shots by the end because of Zippy's awesome modeling.