Plagiarism: A Narrative Character Portrait by Andrew Gentile (2015)

My character is simply named ''our hero.'' The story begins when our hero finds a journal on the ground while walking on the sidewalk. He decides to plagiarize the writing in the journal for an English assignment and goes back to his house to copy the journal with his own handwriting. The moment in time that I have captured in my photograph is when our hero is copying from the journal. The actor (whom I used to portray my subject) and I tried to convey the feeling of guilt and struggle over whether or not our hero should go through with his plan. Then, our hero feels guilty about betraying his morals and ethics. However, our hero feels as though he is doing what is necessary in order to receive the best possible grade. In this photo I was trying to capture the universal feelings that most people have felt at one point or another: internal struggle (because he knows that what he is doing is wrong but he also feels as though he needs to carry on with his plan) and guilt (because he is wrong).

I captured the shot with a red background in Freestyle's studio in order to convey the anxiety, guilt, and the overall negative feeling inside our hero. Then, I used a camera angle that was on the level of my subject in order to best show his emotion and body language. The props that I used were a lamp, a pencil, a journal, paper, and a table. The main problem that I encountered with the production of my photo was that the computer system, which other Freestyle students had previously used, had malfunctioned the day before I was scheduled to shoot in the studio. On the day of the photo shoot, Ms. Parkinson instructed me how to use the new system to take photos. I then had to become acquainted with the new system as quickly as possible in order to create the best photo. All in all, I am extremely proud of this photo and of the actor who was able to portray the feeling for which I was aiming.