What photographic challenges you’re facing with pandemic?

[Mainecoonmaniac]

With every locked down with the pandemic, I’m pretty much stuck at home. Most the shooting I’m able to do is within 5 mile radius on my bike. I’m seeing that same thing over and over and I’m struggling to see deeper into my surroundings. I photograph something beautiful. By the time I process my film and see the images, I would see the bland and prosaic. I hoping that I’ll come of the pandemic a better photographer. What are your struggles and hopes related with staying creative with the pandemic?

 

[Cholentpot]

Um.

No work? No-one is hiring a freelance event photographer for their charity dinner or bar-mitzvah. The summer I had a handful of outdoor events, but my calendar is clear. Even the Amazon product guys stopped calling as they're hurting too for some reason.

On the bright side, some day I'll put out a book with my pandemic photos. Give it a few decades.

 

[BrianShaw]

Early in the pandemic, when first working from home, I had a flurry of photographic activity because of the free-time that previously was expended in a long commute. After a while that waned because of lockdown and stay-at-home orders. Just couldn’t find enough stuff to photograph at or near home. I’m retiring soon and hope to be able to venture out just a bit more for interesting photography... and hoping that one day we all survive this so a more normal lifestyle can resume. When it does, I can thank the pandemic for increasing my knowledge of film processing and macro photography. At least something to be thankful about.

 

[Alan Edward Klein]

It's forced me to go back to the same places at different times of the day and weather conditions to improve the shots I took rather than running all over the place looking for that special shot. It's forcing me to think differently about subjects to squeeze out new stuff.

 

[dpurdy]

I have put new shelving up and bought new archival boxes and have been organizing my prints and negatives of my entire body of work. Trying to get a grip on what it is I have spent my life doing. Trying to organize and display it in a way that is inspirational. However in the last year I did two landscape projects and one still life project.

 

[Alan Edward Klein]

Oh. I finally finished my video slide show from a vacation I took before COvid to the west coast. Now I want to work on a photo album.

 

[vickersdc]

We moved into our new home just as lockdown started last year. Fortunately, we're both working full-time but the lockdown has been great for exploring the area, visiting places even just a few hundred yards away at different times of the day, and building a portfolio of work within just a mile or two of our home.
We're lucky in that we live in Somerset, which is also a beautiful part of the UK and I even started a blog / website to keep a record of those images that I've taken over the last year (with plenty more to add to it). So for me, the lockdown has been very good photographically speaking.

 

[removed account4]

my biggest challenge has been keeping my sanity. then I remember I lost it years ago so I have nothing to keep.
just wish we'd get like 4 feet of snow, it would make this whole situation so much better.

 

[BrianShaw]

my biggest challenge has been keeping my sanity. then I remember I lost it years ago so I have nothing to keep.
just wish we'd get like 4 feet of snow, it would make this whole situation so much better.

Monday or Tuesday... yes?

 

[removed account4]

Monday or Tuesday... yes?

I think so, I hope so! will be sooo nice. I hate those "storm of the century" warnings and we only get like flurries that don't stick
I am caught between 2 problem when the power goes out, i won't know whether to catch up on my humans intermingled with a
race space aiens giants stuff ( you know told to me by a ufologist )
or my you know Notorious RGB was being impersonated by a body double from Venus stuff told to me by my network news.
long ago are the days when I Elvis Presley took my order at Burger King... .. LOL

 

[Auer]

Can't find a crowd with faces. I like cities, But pictures of empty subways and facemasks only goes so far...

 

[halfaman]

I am focusing on printing. I have a lot of things to print, so much that I could stop shooting for a long period. I am also starting to frame prints for my home for the first time, very interesting and stressfull job. That print you think is perfect it is not so much for where you want to put it... I am struggling with one print to frame for more than a month.

 

[Andrew O'Neill]

I can't go to Japan.

 

[NedL]

No time at all... busier than I've ever been ( my work is related to Covid-19 and vaccines ). So, photography has to fit into my higher priority which is to get out and get a walk whenever I can find a couple free hours... I've put a few more solargraphy cans out, and am thinking of making some more. I have a cheap tiny digital camera that fits in my pocket that's gotten lots of use in the past year -- I used to carry a film camera with me all the time but I don't think I'd find time to develop the film I need to get back into one of those grooves I sometimes get in with pinhole paper negs... those are quick to develop and sometimes I get into a rhythm where I carry them whenever I go on a walk... I got as far as sticking them in my car so they'd be ready, but so far I haven't grabbed them and gotten it rolling again.

 

[Alan Edward Klein]

Another challenge - not fighting with the Mrs.

 

[Alan Edward Klein]

Also, people are angrier with strangers. Not fun. I actually started doing landscapes during the pandemic. I always made fun of landscape photographers with their silly tripods, hats and mustaches, but starting to get it now. The results are boring, but the process is therapeutic.

What you need is a person in that bathtub. With a mask.

 

[Sirius Glass]

Last February we were in Oahu and noticed that the Asians were all wearing masks. We looked at the news and decided to self isolate when we got back. So we have been self isolating and wearing masks since mid February, a month before everyone else in the US. One grandson was born during the pandemic and Anne gets called over almost every day to help out. I do not get to see him as often. Two other grandchildren as across the city so we see them every month or two. Another pair of grand children are across the country so we have not seen them in over a year, but we Zoom. I stopped taking photographing except for the newest grandson or to test a new camera. I spend time here and learning to play two instruments. Occasionally developing a roll of film.

We had to cancel five planned trips including one to Wales.

We are on fixed incomes, so financially there has been no impact for us, although we worry about the 40+% whose jobs will never return and those who are financially damaged to the point they will never be where they were before.

 

[awty]

What pandemic?
Looks awful on the news, pandemic has had no real impact on me so far.
I am having a gap year to get some long neglected jobs done, including building a new dedicated darkroom.

 

[Mainecoonmaniac]

I can't go to Japan.

I know. Not being able to travel and see new things have stifled by creativity. For me, not seeing new things is a challenge to see beauty in the everyday and mundane. Andre Kertesz created a whole body of work with a Polaroid camera in his NY apartment. I can't wait to travel to another country and break out of this funk.
https://thinkinpictures.wordpress.com/2007/12/02/andre-kertesz-the-polaroids/

 

[Andrew O'Neill]

I know. Not being able to travel and see new things have stifled by creativity. For me, not seeing new things is a challenge to see beauty in the everyday and mundane. Andre Kertesz created a whole body of work with a Polaroid camera in his NY apartment. I can't wait to travel to another country and break out of this funk.
https://thinkinpictures.wordpress.com/2007/12/02/andre-kertesz-the-polaroids/

I go to Japan every two years to work on an ongoing project. This sets me way back. Hopefully I can get over there in Spring, 2022.

 

[Wallendo]

When I look back on the bad old days of COVID, my photo albums will be full of multiple copies of the same picture. I have photographed my back yard in just about every possible way. Sometimes a buy a new camera or lens to photograph my fire pit in yet another way.

I really enjoy traveling to new places with my camera and photographing new things. Now it seems like I force myself to take photographs just so I have something to develop and scan. I really should get around to building my darkroom, but I have been as busy at ever at work and haven't had the time.

 

[winger]

My biggest challenge is time. Our local schools are hybrid at "best" and full virtual when case numbers go high. Having a child in 5th grade means that I'm spending more time at home making sure he's online when he needs to be and getting stuff done when he'd rather be playing on the Nintendo. I was sorta ok with play dates during the summer, but cases were very low here then (now they're not). I'm kinda schedule-challenged anyway, so not being able to have a solid schedule means it's tougher to block out time for using the darkroom or going out to shoot. For much of the time, the weather was more of an impediment - we've had rain when I didn't want it, it got wicked hot (I hate heat), and we get freezing rain instead of pretty snow. I'm not getting enough exercise, so it'll be tougher when I do get to do more, but I'll get back where I was somehow.This won't last forever (damn well better not last forever). I'd love to be doing more still lifes and more darkroom stuff, but I'm the one who runs everything in the house (groceries, dogs, cleaning, etc..). There are only so many hours in the day.

 

[Kyle M.]

The pandemic isn’t affecting my shooting, the Ohio weather is. All I’m asking for is a dry day warmer than 30 degrees. The one tiny upside to all this is I can go wherever I want to shoot and there are no crowds in the way or strange people to give me dirty looks.

 

[mooseontheloose]

I can't go to Japan.

I can't leave Japan.

Seriously, a lot of my photography is travel-based, so I haven't done a whole lot of shooting this past year. It's funny how hard it is for people to shoot locally. I live in Kyoto, which is pretty photogenic in a few places, but mostly I just see it as background. I could travel to other parts of the country, but I don't want to be part of the problem where no one is taking this pandemic seriously. Footfall in major areas around Tokyo has gone UP since the state of emergency was called at the beginning of January. Life goes on as normal here even though people are dying at home and in hotels because nearly 70% of hospitals (privately-run) refuse to admit Covid-19 patients (it's not that they don't have enough beds, they just don't want them). However, one thing it has allowed me to do (in theory) is catch up on printing. My darkroom and camera gear has been properly decluttered and organized, I have more film and chemicals than any Yodobashi Camera that I can walk into, and, like someone else has mentioned, I'm now looking at framing and displaying various prints I have (mostly from other photographers) around my home.

 

[Sirius Glass]

I have not been to the gym in over a year. I used to go three to five days a week.