Sadness through the pandemic

As an amateur photographer I’m still learning a lot about my Nikon camera, lighting, and editing. Quite frankly, I feel more comfortable capturing moments in my phone than in my professional camera. Originally, I was going to breakdown the process of a fashion photo I took of a good friend of mine. I used my Nikon D600, had a rustic background and quite frankly my friend looked like a Calvin Klein ad. However, as I was selecting the pictures, I scrolled to one I took a few weeks ago that really made an impact on me. Just like any artist, a photographer needs inspiration to capture moments in time and make them beautiful. Although I try to do this with my camera, sometimes my phone traps moments that are breathtaking.

The picture I chose is a portrait of my four-year-old niece. The reason for my selection is simply because the whole process of the photograph is a message on its own. It was a Thursday afternoon when she was visiting me. Her expression was quite visible, and it reflected sadness. I asked her why she felt that way and her response was shocking!

“I’m so bored, I just want to play with my friends. When will it be normal again?”

I took a few seconds to digest her words as they were coming from a four-year-old girl. Immediately, I took my phone out because she had inspired me to capture the moment. We were right by the window where it was bright, so it was perfect. I placed her arms in front of her face as if making an equal sign. Then, switched my iPhone 8 plus camera to portrait mode, lower the exposure, and in one click, I captured the sadness of a child living through the pandemic.

After snaping the photo, I used the phone editing tools to crop the size, so her facial expression centered and clearly exposed. The next couple of editing steps I took were made in the mobile Adobe Photoshop app (Adobe Photoshop Express). Although the app for my computer is quite efficient and I can create beautiful images sometimes it can be quite time consuming. I figured that a four-year-old doesn’t need retouching or anything like that. In fact, I wanted the essence of the image to be as precise as possible. I simply opened the image in the B&W1 pre-made Themes. Since it was already cropped to the size I wanted, all I had left to do was play around with the words and text boxes. I moved the white and yellow text to her right arm above her eyes. I inserted quote she said, “When will it be normal again?” The translucid text was moved to be right in front of her left eye. The clear letters spell her name Lily and above the year 2021. I deleted a whole text box I found unnecessary but kept the bottom left to add a message.

In the early stages of the pandemic, the Spanish singer/song writer Residente, released a song called “Antes que el mundo se acabe.” Which translates to, before the world ends. The song is dedicated to the tough times the world lived through COVID-19 while social distancing. It emphasizes that no matter how hard the pandemic hit us, we had our loved ones who we quarantined with. In the song he says “por ahora nos damos un beso, antes que el mundo se acabe”. Which translates to, for now we kiss each other, before the world ends. I chose part of the quote to be included as she is the youngest one in the family and through quarantine and the crisis, nothing made us happier than being able to kiss her beautiful face. Over the quote I added the name of the song to complete the photograph.

The process took me about 15 minutes from the moment she inspired me to photograph her until the second I posted her picture to my highlight story on Instagram. In the highlight I added the actual song and it received a lot of love from my followers. Although I originally wasn’t going to use this photograph, this is the one that had a deeper meaning. Not only was the picture powerful in my opinion, but the process to make it was fast and simple. Using the AP Express app was so efficient with the premade themes and text boxes. The quality of the iPhone camera also helped a lot along with knowing the trick of the exposure tool. Cameras are amazing to have but if you think about it, the average person doesn’t carry a camara everywhere. But we all have our phones within a hand reach. So, the combination of a phone camera and the easy access to mobile photoshop made it possible to freeze the sadness of my little princess being saddened by the Corona Virus pandemic.