This image was born out of a spontaneous experiment I ran at home with my then three-year-old, who, as anyone who has tried photographing a toddler will understand, has the patience of a fruit fly. I asked him if he’d be up for pulling a few different faces so I could create a collage to mark his third year: silly, serious, sassy, all the classics. He was into it for approximately four minutes. And then this moment of genuine frustration from a kid who had reached the end of his stand-still tether.
Shot in front of a blank wall, using only the natural window light, I framed him with my Canon R6 and 85mm lens wide open at f/1.8.
The post-processing took time and I had to keep returning to it. I cropped in to accentuate the emotion and spent longer than I care to admit finessing the light (my biggest challenge!). The decision to go black and white added just the right punch and stripped away any distractions, letting his expression carry the full weight of the story.