My practice drastically changed once going into quarantine. I found it very difficult to have any motivation once being home all the time. This is especially because I was mainly photographing people. I was no longer able to photograph people in the same way, and ended up mainly photographing my brother in different metroparks in the Toledo area. This proved to be a challenge as I could no longer shoot on film either, and my dslr stopped working a week into quarantine. This led to most of my photos being phone pics. With these limitations I tried to play off of weird projects I already had been doing. My photos for mom series are literal phone pictures I have always taken for my mom of my brother and I doing weird things in parks. This also drew off of my idea to make eye-spy type pictures of my brother and I hiding in the trees. The last of my film photos are also stuck as edited TIFFs. I was unable to download photoshop as my laptop has no storage, and the files were too big for...
My photography practice has changed a bit since quarantine. Since nobody could go outside and businesses and parks were closed, I found it a little difficult to find inspiration around my house and neighborhood. To be honest, quarantine made me a little lazy. I found myself taking pictures but I wasn’t really loving them as much. I usually go outside and explore new or old places because I find that more interesting than taking photos of home since I’m so familiar with it.
ReplyDeleteI don’t really have a specific subject matter that I prefer over others, so I would say that I was still able to work with the same subject matter that I’m used to. Although, while in quarantine, I took a lot more photos of my dog than I usually do. I was also able to take graduation photos with my twin sister at her college and mine since we have been together throughout quarantine. I’m so happy that I had my Canon EOS Rebel T5 with me. It may not be the fanciest camera, but I found it easier to use than my film camera. Color correcting was a lot easier, too.
I think the major thing that I took away from this experience was to not take anything for granted and to learn to look at things in a different way. Sometimes a new perspective is exactly what you need to gain a new view on life. It’s weird that the moment you’re not allowed to go outside, that’s all you want to do. Sometimes I was able to motivate myself and other times I really just wanted to watch Netflix. I know a lot of other people were struggling to find motivation during quarantine. I think at the beginning of this mess, I was the most motivated and it’s just went down from there, whether because the situation has lost its glamor or because of senioritis.
I’m really excited to be graduating this weekend. At the same time, I’m very nervous to be leaving school during this difficult time. I think this pandemic could not have come at the worst possible time for me. As for plans after graduation, I will either continue at my current position as a graphic designer for a local screw manufacturing company or I will start to search for jobs around the Toledo or Columbus area. This whole situation has been very unfortunate, and it took away one of the biggest moments of my life. I was also supposed to leave for a weeklong trip to Ireland with my sister right after graduation. But I have been trying to look for the silver lining of this situation. My sister and I are now able to save up even more money to plan a bigger trip abroad and I will still be able to walk at my graduation ceremony eventually.