Photographer

Conrad Ratko deRozario Cvitan

Finalist in

Upper Primary Category

Written Statement

I chose to explore the theme by photographing a person because I think people are very fragile. No matter how confident someone appears they will always be nervous or concerned about something.

I chose to explore the theme of fragility by focusing on the strongest person I know – my dad. My dad is lawyer, and he works in a very high stress environment. In his work he sees people with bad injuries and people suffering in terrible situations. This photo was taken just after the COVID–19 cases started in Australia. In this image, my dad was very distracted with how this pandemic would affect us, my mum and his business. This picture symbolizes the trail of thought and the decisions my dad had to make to protect us and our family. This image caught a moment of vulnerability and fragility.

When I shot this picture I used a portrait lens (80mm) and shot with an aperture of 1.8, ISO 800 and the shutter speed of 1/60. The lighting was from the side, from a partly opened window. I increased the contrast on the computer to make the image clearer. I made the image black and white as this made it seem more still and sad.