Spreading Color: A Narrative Character Portrait by Brittany Haley (2015)

My character is an average person who has nothing special going for him. He lives in a boring world and everything in his whole life is lacking in color. He very badly wants to find love, and he writes lots of love poems expressing his need for someone to come and bring color into his life. On his way to work, he leaves his poem on the bus. A girl then finds his poem, reads it, and becomes extremely intrigued by it, running off the bus to give it back to him. They later meet in a coffee shop for a date and she brings the color into his life that he was looking for. In my photograph, I captured him looking longingly at a rose that signifies love.

I captured the shot using one light rather than three so that only part of his face was highlighted while the rest was in shadows. I did this because I wanted the photo to be in black and white and I thought it would look the best with only one light, which it did. I did this because I thought it would give him a longing and sad look. I posed him looking down longingly at the rose to show how much he desires love in his life. I didn't want many props because I thought it would be distracting, so my only props were the rose and a stool for him to sit on. In Photoshop, I felt the photo looked best in black and white. I also changed the quad-tones so the photo had colder shades of gray and blue than just black. I then decided that the rose should be the main focus of the photo, so I left it in color to signify the love and color needed in his life.