Posted 5 years ago in Trending, Guest Blog by Organic Headshots
2 MIN READ - When COVID-19 lockdowns started closing businesses and obliging everyone to shelter in place in their homes, Organic Headshots watched our studio’s appointment calendar almost completely clear out. And when the governor ordered “non-essential” businesses to shutter their doors, it stung a little, to be honest, since anyone’s paycheck can feel pretty darn essential once it disappears.
It’s for a heckuva good reason, of course—and we’re happy to do our part in flattening the curve and stopping the virus from spreading by postponing photo shoots and implementing new systems to keep the studio and everyone who enters it safe.
We’re all in this same strange boat together: feeling anxious because of the pandemic, feeling concerned for our clients and their families and for the health of everyone around us, and feeling uneasy about what’s going to happen next. Without our cameras, we’ve all been coping mostly by catching up on photo editing (or re-editing old photos just for funsies), baking bread, snuggling our pets, cleaning some closets, and otherwise keeping busy in the same ways everyone else with cleared calendars has been occupying their time.
We’re also all enduring by flexing our creative muscles. One person at a time, we each went into the empty studio last week, put our cameras on timers, took some photos of ourselves, and used some post-production magic to be inserted into pictures of vintage cameras. The result is a series of images that reflect how we’re feeling while we’re missing our clients’ beautiful faces and the sounds of a camera shutter going KER-CHUNK. We’re feeling a bit like the forgotten old film cameras that have been collecting dust on our shelves. Lonely. Bored. Restless. Small. But coping well.
Portrait photography is inherently a very social business. We need to be around people in order photograph them, and being unable to do so is… well… making us sad. But whenever this is all over and we’re in the studio for back-to-back sessions again or traveling to our clients’ offices when buildings are filled with people again, we’ll feel back to our old selves. We’re looking forward to that day and to hearing all about our clients’ lockdown adventures in breadmaking. We’re sure a lot of people will be getting back to work in different ways then, and we might be helping some people through job changes by updating their LinkedIn profile photos, and photographing companies for their marketing materials as they boost new business to make up for what was lost.
It’s unusual for it to be so lonesome in the studio: a room that’s part workshop, part laboratory, and part oasis. A place where people come to collaborate to create images with common goals. Taking these photos alone in the still and quiet space was a somber act. But also faintly blissful. We’re ready to get KER-CHUNKING again when it’s time. Until then, we’ll be cleaning our lenses and trying not to pout. Too much.
This guest blog was provided by Organic Headshots.
