THESE MAY BE OUR HARDEST DAYS, and we have no real idea when they will end. Two months ago this was all beyond comprehension. Now, it’s all we know. People are sick everywhere and death is in nearly every headline.
I had several motivations in making this photograph, and the biggest challenge was to figure out how to convey several ideas in one simple image.
Primarily, I wanted to say thank you to all the medical providers around the world for their dedication and sacrifice. We hide behind closed doors; they fling the door open and run into the teeth of the virus. That part was easy, just say the words.
But I also wanted to focus on the overwhelming reality of exhaustion, inadequate supplies, and an uncertain future.
If you know my work, you know I love simplicity and the power that can come from an uncluttered image. I adore minimalism. So I started (and ended) with the essentials of personal protective equpment (PPE, our favorite new abbreviation)—mask, gloves, tape, and the sleeve of a gown.
And I wanted the lighting simple, too. One key light, a kicker/backlight (to help the mask glow), perhaps a reflector to tame the shadows. The real difficulty came with the quality I wanted the light to have: harsh to fit the mood of the times, but soft as well, to take the edge off. And all against a black background. I wanted this to be serious, dramatic, even a bit disturbing.
And the color palette was deliberate, too. Alhough this is a true, worldwide, pandemic, the nod to US patriotism, using red (a bit muted), white, and blue, was intentional. Red is the universal color of emergency (think American Red Cross.)
It turned out that all this took several hours to achieve, and by the end I was drenched in sweat inside all that protective clothing.
Once we started shooting, we just kept shooting. My dear wife, Karen, at the camera, me leaning awkwardly forward and changing the angle of things just a bit between frames. It took a long time to get it nearly right, and I got grumpy (sorry, sweetheart). I disappeared into my post-processing office several times, only to come out with some issue: I’d missed precise focus, I had to reposition a light, the mask didn’t look beat up enough…
During the entire shoot I had been using both of my hands, trying to look like a hospital worker at the end of a dreadful shift, hands resting on their knees, mask dangling. But none of those images quite worked. Then Karen said, “Try just one hand, and clench your fist.” The shot got simpler (which I loved), and two missing emotional elements suddenly appeared: these brave people aren’t just weary and sad, they’re also angry and resolute.
And bang. There it was.
Here is the big Flickr version.
I almost never do this, but would you please share this? Thank you.
Meta: Pentax K-3, 35mm f/2.8 @ f/9, ISO 100, 1/180th of a second, main light, kicker reflector, and well over a hundred tries
