What might be worth keeping from this lockdown experience?

I have been thinking about what I might miss about Zoom portraiture, when I get back to making pictures in the real world. Or, more importantly, are there things about the process that I would not want to give up, even if I could?

One obvious advantage to making portraits via video chat is that I can photograph people all over the world, so long as they have an internet connection. This has been the number one positive for me, as I love hearing what life is like in all corners of the globe. There are limits of course. I did think to myself, “Wow, I could even photograph someone in Antartica”. However, I soon learnt that over 1000 people at McMurdo Station share about the same bandwidth that we have at home. Random video calling, even for portrait making, is not permitted. So, I cannot get everywhere, but I have reached a lot of places.

Less obvious, is the kind of relationship building that Zoom allows. In pre COVID times, when people gave me a choice about where to make a portrait, I would always suggest that the sitter is on their own home turf. That way they are in their own environment and feel relatively relaxed, and the image is more likely to reflect their unique character. With Zoom, I think that effect is enhanced. Not only are people in their own homes, but I am much less intrusive on a screen than I would be in full-bodied real life. The portrait sitter is more in control. They get to choose what I see of the space, and they are the ones who position the camera; albeit under my direction. I think that people can be more honest and open with this set up. I have observed that on the whole this makes for more genuine portraits.

Finally, I love that Zoom’s format imposes a “selfie-signature” to all my pictures. A portrait subject’s expression is always, to some degree, a reflection of the photographer’s own. When I look at other people’s work, I am always asking myself, “What conversation was going on when this picture was made?” and “What caused the sitter to have this kind of expression?”. What I love about Zoom portraits is that the photograph of me in the corner, holding my camera, highlights the reality that portraits are a collaboration. It’s not just about the person you see in the final picture, it’s about the artist as well.

This Zoom portrait is of a friend of mine Gart, who lives in Komatsu, Japan.

Lockdown update, 10 weeks in....

In the UK we’ve been in lockdown for more than two months. I haven’t done an in-person portrait session since mid March. I hope that there will be an opportunity to get back to that soon. In the meantime, I have been really enjoying connecting with people for portraits via Zoom. 

I was commissioned by AreWeEurope magazine to photograph 10 Europeans during lockdown. It was fascinating to check-in with people in Spain, Denmark, France, Germany, Norway, Italy and Sweden and also to talk to Europeans who live in the UK about their different experiences of staying a home during the pandemic. 

I have also been working with the University of Huddersfield on a research project which is exploring the impact of lockdown and home education on mothers. I am making Zoom portraits of all the women who are taking part across the UK. I have loved hearing about their experiences and the challenges faced by those juggling home working with home schooling responsibilities. I have also been struck by the wide range of views on whether or not children should be returning to school at this time and also the reality of whether there is even an opportunity to attend school in some areas.

As I mentioned in my previous blog, these Zoom portraits have to be much more of a collaboration than in-person portraits. I have to communicate my wishes really clearly so that the subjects can place the laptop or other device where I want it. Sometimes there is a willing assistant in the house to hold the device. Bringing a third person into the process poses new challenges. In one case the assistant was a photographer themselves, and found it hard to let go of their own artistic vision in order to frame the picture as I wanted. In another case, I had to direct all my instructions to the subject via the headset worn by the person holding the phone. Interesting!

The pictures include much more of the subject’s environment than my previous works, but I have been really enjoying that aspect of the results. I definitely cannot be a perfectionist and sometimes the process works much better than others.

It is amazing to be able to pop up in people’s living rooms around the world via my computer. It really is fantastic to talk to so many different people with a wide range of perspectives. But I have noticed that I do miss the full sensory experience of travelling to and turning up at a new location. I look forward to doing that again. 

For now, I’m delighted to have a commission for another Zoom series of portraits coming up, this time of a local community group in Oxford.

Post COVID19 I hope that I will be able to return to in-person portrait shoots, while still being able to connect with people around the world via video chat, and improve on how I capture portraits in that way. 

Social Distance Portraits

The COVID 19 pandemic is forcing many of us to find creative ways to do our jobs. Photographers are no exception. By mid-March, most of my commissioned work was being postponed and the three exhibitions I had on show in Oxford were, one by one, being closed to the public. 

As a portrait photographer, I depend upon meeting others to do my work. To make it worse, I was in the middle of a project with the objective of getting people who disagreed with each other to hug. Suddenly, I found myself in a world where people couldn’t even hug their friends, never mind their enemies.

Luckily, I remembered one of the project ideas which was lurking in my “someday” spreadsheet. I had long thought that it would be interesting to experiment with photographing people far away via Skype. With people social distancing around the world, and using video calls as their main form of communication, I realised I had the perfect opportunity to experiment.

My portraits aim to celebrate the under-celebrated. I want to make images of people which tell their special and often untold stories. While we are all rightly praising the key workers who are getting us through this crisis, those who are isolating at home are also playing a valuable part. I wanted to document some of their stories at this extraordinary time.

I started by asking a good friend of mine, who is on immunosuppressants, and who had started to self-isolate early. She happily agreed to take part. After that, I put out a call on Twitter and Instagram and started to gather volunteers from around the world: There was a friend’s 81 year old mum who was living alone in Edinburgh, and didn’t really know how to use FaceTime until I talked her through it; people in Spain and Italy, who were ahead of us on the pandemic curve; even a woman in Australia who has been bed-bound for 20 years and is enjoying the fact that so much has moved on line during the global lockdown. The volunteers keep coming.

Despite the constraints, I am enjoying this new way of working. I’m used to meeting people who I don’t know, and working with them to put them at ease and create a portrait. However, I do not normally have to share so much of my process with the sitter. For these social distance portraits, I really do need to collaborate with the subject. I get them to show me around their spaces. Then, I make a quick assessment of the light, and ask them to place their device in a location that gives me a view that I’m happy with. At first, I made close up portraits, but then I decided that the images were more interesting with more of the environment included. I found that this way the portraits looked different from the mugshots that we are all so familiar with on our daily Zoom meetings.

Light is always something that I need to think about, but now I need to take into account bandwidth and webcam capabilities as I compose my shots. 

People are often surprised when I get out my camera to photograph the screen rather than taking a screen shot. I find that the artefacts that I get as a result of making the image like this make it much more interesting. Even though these images are made using digital layer upon digital layer, I love the fact that the black border of the screen looks a little like the black border of an old negative.

It feels important to be documenting this peculiar period of history. I am also finding the process in itself is worthwhile. Just spending some time talking to people while they are isolated and having a bit of fun making a picture, is food for the soul.