I can't sleep. So I thought if I work on these photos of Ira, they will drug me off.
Ira was this girl probably around 7-8 years old who brought out nasi lemak to us when we had breakfast at her mother's little warung in Tioman. Not only her mother's nasi lemak blew my head off, but I was fascinated with her beautiful face and her curly hair that opens wonderfully like that.
So I asked her things like where her school is and told her how nice it was of her helping her mother running the place. After asking her mother's permission for photographs, she willingly sat there with her cat crawling in the frame and took photographs of Ira with her mother's warung as a backdrop.
On personal note, technically I like the second photo with Ira facing me and the cat facing the other way, sitting almost identically. The different colors of the wood and the place feels rusticity, and worked well as a black and white wet print. But I love her portraits where she looked straight in, that every time I look at them again I can almost see her fear, anxiety, hopes and dreams. Which is what I always seek in portraiture.
