Revealing itself to be one of the more difficult photo assignments I have taken on in the past two years as a photo student at howard, the narrative panorama also proved itself to be an assignment which I can individualize the process to express what I was trying to covey. The final product was not confined to a single 11’’x 8’’  piece of paper rather, I could cut, arrange, and put as many photos in as I see fit. This extra step of artistic freedom is one not often given in the dark room, processes are very uniform, it is harder to manipulate film than digital, so it is very rare when we get to create a composition different from normal in the dark room. With this new assignment I saw my opportunity to create something different and I ran with it because being able to express my individuality and unique style, although still am developing and perfecting, is something I really enjoy doing in photo class.   

The composition I created, entitled “always a child at heart”, shows a teenage girl comforted by a teddy bear, however, using the panorama techniques shown, the bear is larger than it normally would be in a regular print, distorting the image. In the dark room, instead of lining the pictures up to be the same size the pictures to the left and the right of the middle image I enlarged by bringing the light closer to the easel. This made the bears left and right paw larger than normal.    

The reasoning behind making the bear appear larger than the human character was to not distort the size of the bear, but distort the size of the the girl, by making the bear look bigger the girl looks smaller which makes her look more childlike next to the bear. The characters expression of content and joy shows that childhood comforts such as teddybears and toys can create peace and make even an older person happy. This ties back into the title “always a child at heart” because the older character is resorting back to child like ways.

Although the distortion does make the character seem more childlike it is symbolic in the pleasure of simplicity one gets as a child the simplicity and joy out of coloring or doing a puzzle or simply napping. Many things that are childlike, however, can be calming and relaxing to those adults who run a crazy life and just need something simple to take their minds off their daily lives.