A triptych of Cilla from Portraits of Pride, a project I completed in support of inclusivity in rugby with the aim to offer players a voice of how they benefited from sport to help encourage others to take part. The project started with Manchester Village Spartans, the UK’s second gay and inclusive team whom I photographed in their old clubhouse, Sales Sports Club, before it was demolished to make way for a new building. It was an odd experience taking the photographs by the bar, which had clearly been the scene of both many a victory and also loss for the multiple local sports clubs in the area, knowing I would be one of the last people to make use of that location.
I thought I’d show the portrait of Cilla in colour, the black and white, and also in a frame where I played with the chromatic aberration (I adjusted the red, green and blue channels) which is why it appears somewhat fuzzy; this is caused by the various colour layers not being exactly aligned. nb I added a mask to make his jersey disappear into the backdrop; black being the base colour of his playing top I did not see a need to separate from the backdrop, rather I merged the two together. Oddly his cropped hair offers a slight halo effect which is the soft glow between his hair and the dark background. Usually a sign of over editing and something to be avoided, in this instance it is merely a result of Cilla’s short hair.
Having completed most of the project in black and white and revisiting ‘Cilla’ now (his real name is David but ‘Cilla’ as he’s a self confessed big softie off the pitch) I am loving the colour version as the timbre of his beard is glorious.
