The “Pandemic Birthday” session is arguably one of my most favorite Creative Portrait sessions.
The idea for it came about during the height of the COVID-19 Pandemic, stemming from the panic and fear that was hiding just below the surface, the threat of severe illness and death that lurked around every corner and from a longing for the world to return to some semblance of normalcy.
This session was conceived of just after my birthday in late Spring of 2020.
At this point in time, everyone was wearing a mask of one form or another, “social distancing” (staying a minimum of 6 feet away from the next person) was very much a thing, and gatherings of any size were forbidden by health organizations and most local governments. So having a birthday party just wasn’t going to happen.
With this session the goal was to visually represent all those feelings: the military grade gas mask showing the societal fear of the virus. Standing alone in an open field reflects the isolation and lack of connection to others that we all felt. The party dress and hat show the desire for something, anything, to be normal again. And the balloons drifting off into an angry sky speaks both to the loss of control over our own lives that we all felt tinged with a feeling of hopelessness.
As with most of my personal projects, once I have the idea I then start searching for wardrobe, location and props. Once those are lined up I start the process of finding a model to work with.
In this instance, the party dresses came from various area and online thrift stores, the gas mask came from an eBay seller in Eastern Europe, the wigs came from Amazon and the balloons and other party supplies came from Party City.
I used two cameras to during this session: a normal camera and one that captures infrared light. At times I used them independently of each other, at other times I had them mounted on a tripod side-by-side connected with remote trigger so I could capture the same image with both and do some compositing work.
In the gallery below you’ll find a number of images – some are raw but show the direction I was going while others are fully edited and others are somewhere in between. Hope you enjoy seeing some of these extra images and outtakes!
