What life and photography lessons have we learned...

[DownUnder]

...since 2020 when the Covid pandemic first struck.?

For many of us, our photography, interests, even life in general, has greatly changed during the past 20 months.

After eight years (since my retirement) of happily wandering around Southeast Asia with my cameras, I had to curtail my travels and come back to Australia to quarantine myself at home. I had/still have a lot to do here, but this self-imposed isolation has taken its toll on my life and my photography.

Most of my photographer friends also shoot less. A few have stopped entirely. This is sad, but I console myself by thinking they may all return to the fold in time.

I no longer shoot as haphazardly as I've done in the past. In 60 years of active photography, I've taken so many images of so many (too many in many cases) subjects. For one thing, I've had to come to terms with my lifelong habit of returning to the same places several times to shoot and reshoot the same old-same old. Old buildings in Asia and our cats are two subjects I have far too many of far too few subjects (in both cases). I now look at my image-stash and reflect, why didn't I vary my approach to creating all these images more when the going was good?

I've stopped buying cameras as I did in the past. Other than a Leica iif kit which came my way at a good (not cheap) price late last year, I now own fewer cameras than I did at the start of 2020, for which I can only say, thanks Ebay!!

I've culled a LOT of photo equipment and at least half my darkroom, which has cleared out quite a bit of previously cluttered home space (and perhaps even saved my relationship with my partner). For the first time in who knows how many years our family cats can now nap on the spare bed in the second bedroom/my home office/darkroom, which is no small achievement for me.

I now limit my darkroom sessions to carefully selected days (mostly on weekends when my partner works) and reduced hours. Good music and red wine kept me fueled in the past, but at my age I now find the latter has more not so enjoyable effects on me than it did before - our wine cellar is almost empty now anyway.

I've moved further away from film and more to digital. I will never ever give up on analog, but as I use up my hoarded and refrigerated film stocks, I find i'm now no longer so avidly replacing these as I did in the past. The insane price of films in Australia is one reason for this, but also in the past 12 months I've found myself moving more to digital for color work. I will always use film for B&W but my Nikon D800 and D700s produce very satisfactory monochrome images with a little care and selective metering. With color, I still shoot as I always have in P mode, but as I've already said, I look more carefully now before I make images and I also try to meter all my images more selectively to make the best use of my sometimes quirky Nikons (or is it rather a case of a sometimes quirky photographer?? The jury is still out on this one).

Less is better for me now. I find I have enough good portable hard disks at home to last me out, but they do fill up so fast if I let myself go...

That's all I will say for now. I may return with some more thoughts as this thread evolves and expands.

Over to you now, ladies and gentlemen.

PS My thanks to John Bragg for his excellent recent thread on a similar topic, which was the trigger to my own thoughts to start this.

 

[Bill Clark]

My photography is with my family and travel. This keeps me busy!

The other day my wife washed our five year olds pants, amongst other clothes, and surprise, surprise, when she pulled them from the dryer, one of the pockets had three rocks!

Mostly digital capture. But I do have several black and white rolls to develop, some are 35mm while others are 120.

I enjoy making photographs with everyone of my family.

Covid has changed my photography as we haven’t traveled much since it began.

 

[Godfrey]

Since I'm more of an object/abstract photographer than a people photographer, the pandemic time hasn't changed my subject matter by much. I do a lot of my shooting on my bicycle rides and exercise walks around the neighborhood, which have continued unabated throughout the pandemic as these two activities have remained available to me in this locale.

What has happened is that I've been shooting a lot of instant film and a bit less digital capture. And a good bit more medium format standard film as well. I like the dynamics of the larger format film (and sensors) compared to 35mm FF or APS-C for a lot of my subject matter.

I also like the challenge ... Getting consistent and usable exposures with the very very limited latitude of instant film takes some forethought and care, and with each exposure costing around $2.00, I think about what I'm doing quite a lot. I want each exposure to make a finished print as much of the time as possible. I find it a lot of fun, as well as an exacting and careful shooting workflow. 🙂

G

 

[neal3k]

Being quite an introvert, 2020 didn't affect me much as I mainly shoot old buildings, old farm equipment and old vehicles. (And I am old, too.) I continued my move back from digital to film and during the year bought and tested quite a few cameras and new films. In 2021, I started selling the cameras that didn't interest me as much as I would have hoped and discovered Barnack Leicas and copies including Canon and Zorki. Now I am in a new world. I don't think 2020 and COVID made any difference at all with the exception of no long road trips.

 

[agentlossing]

I have learned to be a little more content with street photography that isn't what I used to consider ideal, i.e. in the city, with interesting characters or interactions. I used to like to travel away from my very small coastal town to the big city for street stuff, but forcing myself to lay low opened up a lot of outdoor opportunities during the busier parts of the year (yes, tourists still show up!). Studying crowds for interesting moments has probably improved my overall street shooting abilities a lot. I also shoot more film than digital with street these days, so I've improved my film processing and experimented with/grown familiar with a few more films.

Life lessons? I still don't really know. I feel like I'm better at staying steady (which is kind of a north star for me, I have inclinations to being type-A but have the example of my father, who was a very unexcitable farmer, maybe too unflappable at times, but still a good benchmark during times like these) and letting the press of hyper-sensitive and fearful world, job and social pressures to just flow by without troubling myself too much. Problem is, most of the people around me don't seem to hold this as a value. If the people in my life don't also try to stay steady, they become another part of the burden, and I have to be careful to stay open and sympathetic to them and not distance myself as I do with other sources of the problems. These days are complicated times!

 

[Evergreen States]

The only thing that has changed is that my interest in getting out and taking pictures - or even looking for pictures - has dwindled drastically. I moved to another neighborhood to be with my partner and remotely interesting things are even farther away on foot. My health has gotten worse made the stairs more challenging the past few months. I've been cooped up inside much of the summer due to the Heat Dome that hit the Pacific Northwest this summer. I did buy a Fuji GA645 last summer and have taken some decent shots with it but, again, not much around me interests me and being stuck indoors is a hindrance.

What pictures I have taken bore me. I haven't taken a picture I'm actually proud of in months.

As far as life lessons, it's that citizens need to take action on a local level to curb suburban sprawl, create resource recovery and upcycling programs, start neighborhood assemblies and start farming our lawns. Between the obvious disruptions of manmade climate change and the worldwide slide into political authoritarianism, things are already starting to get ugly and are only going to get worse. We'll need robust community support networks if we're going to survive.

 

[charjohncarter]

The lockdown has made me lazy. I have read too many books over the last 18 months, and used less film. I've learned just how difficult it is to get a good image.

 

[agentlossing]

As far as life lessons, it's that citizens need to take action on a local level to curb suburban sprawl, create resource recovery and upcycling programs, start neighborhood assemblies and start farming our lawns. Between the obvious disruptions of manmade climate change and the worldwide slide into political authoritarianism, things are already starting to get ugly and are only going to get worse. We'll need robust community support networks if we're going to survive.

I read an article that was suggesting our move to online and local pickup grocery shopping might start to curb our rampant consumerism. I think that's a bit optimistic, but it's such a plain and simple concept to try and reduce our net consumerism. Just to produce a tiny bit, instead of being 100% consume. Really important for sanity as well as anything else.

 

[Prest_400]

Quite a change and I just realised, the summer up North is on its way out and I didn't shoot a single roll during the last 4 weeks. I ought to have used up some of the Portra.
I have enjoyed life and a relaxed snapshooting style.
Last winter was very productive, the darkroom is a perfect winter lockdown location and churned out Lith prints in a way I think I won't again. As the seasons are very pronounced, once spring came in, I wanted to be outdoors instead of inside.

Visiting my folk twice during summer (2 weeks from the next one again) I did shoot quite a bit over there, mixed up. Film wise only 35mm for the portability and spontaneous format; I don't want to deal with Medium format in the heat of Mediterranean summer when relaxing on the beach. That material and the undeveloped color rolls I look forward to see.

Likewise I only developed 1/4 35mm BW I shot on my last trip that I came back from 4 weeks ago. Will try to do these on an evening this week before flying off again, as to not do repeated work. Anyhow, I preferred using the summer weather to be out active instead of finding a moment to develop; at the end of Sundays I was tired so ended up resting.

I have a much planned change for next fall and winter. Let's see how Delta develops but I have a move and some lifestyle changes. Will be closer to my community darkroom, so overall I might be frequent again.