I created this portrait one sunny afternoon—and then again, days later, in a dark room with a computer screen.
The subject is a close friend of mine, exhausted from a medical textbook and a 12-kilometer bike ride to the park in the city we call home. As always back then, I had my camera with me. I waited patiently for her to lift her eyes from the pages—and clicked.
The light wasn’t ideal. But when I got home and reviewed the images, I noticed something: one side of her face was harshly lit, while the other was wrapped in soft shadow. The asymmetry distorted her features, yet I found beauty in it.
That’s when the idea came—to isolate only the shaded, gently illuminated side. I spent a couple of days experimenting in post-processing, and this is what emerged: The Better Half