Margarete: A Narrative Character Portrait by Sabrina Kwong (2015)

Margarete Acatilla. Self absorbed, self admiring, and conceited because of an incident long ago. A teenage narcissist who needs to pay less attention to the the reflection in her silver handheld mirror and be more concerned with those around her. As a young child, Margarete had been isolated and rather shy until she met her new best friend, an abandoned kitten by her house. Since the death of the small and weak cat, she has blamed herself for the accident and punished herself by not interacting anymore with others. She spends time alone by herself; that's where her narcissism comes from. However, in my graphic novel, I present the story of the protagonist with the conflict of her decision to whether find a reflection of her unaesthetic appearance or help a disabled teenage boy. Here, the moment captured in my character photo was not within any of the stories I explained above, however it expresses the overall personality of my fictional character in the beginning of my graphic novel.

I captured the shot with angles that portray my character as a narcissistic character and angles that will emphasize the mirror.The only prop I used was a silver mirror which my model could look into, portraying her as self absorbed while sitting. My model had put some simple makeup on which wasn't overdone so as to have a natural look. Since one of the lights in the the studio was malfunctioning, one key problem I faced was letting more light into some of my photos. I dealt with this by editing the photo I needed and adjusting it to make the picture seem lighter and appropriate for the mood.