How lockdown helped my photography
Isle of Harris, Out Hebrides - Nikon D5500, 16-85mm lens @ 16mm, f11, 10 sec’s, ISO 100, tripod
When lockdown was imposed in March 2020 I had no option but to put my camera away for a few weeks and think about other things to do.
I did a fair bit of cycling as the roads were nice and quiet and I also completed some of those jobs around the house that I had put off for far too long. But I quickly started looking for other activities to occupy my time and, ideally, I wanted them to be something to do with photography.
My initial instinct was to learn new photographic techniques: close-up (macro) and portrait photography. However, the novelty quickly wore-off and I ended up turning to my ever-growing image library and curating the photos within it. Which made me consider what I could do with the thousands of images I had put so much effort into capturing over the course of the previous decade. After all, there’s no point in crawling out of bed at the crack of dawn and wandering around a cold and windswept hillside to take a spectacular shot, if no one sees the final image. I do post photos on facebook and instagram, but I find social media to be a fickle and frustrating business. Chasing ‘likes’ doesn’t really do much for me and displaying my work as a postage stamp sized low-resolution image doesn’t show it off to best effect.
I do print and frame my images and anyone who’s been to my house knows that from the moment they enter the front door they’re confronted by an assortment of Josh pictures! But I still felt that there must be other ways of widening my audience beyond friends, family and the local postman?
I therefore decided to produce a book. In fact, I ended-up producing three books over the course of the lockdown (all are available for sale on this website!). And what a fascinating process it was. It made me study my own images in a way that I had never done before. I had to look at them as others would and, inevitably, it made me question my photographic style and what I liked and disliked about the photographs I had taken.
It was a very cathartic process and one which made me question the type of of photographs I should take when lockdown was eventually lifted. Interestingly, I came to the conclusion that most of my photos are very different to those images I am drawn to that have been taken by other photographers! I realised that I need to be braver and not always opt for the safe and conventional image when other more striking photos may be possible.
Rather than immediately opting for a wide-angle or mid-range zoom, I should pick up my telephoto zoom more often and focus on the details in the landscape. I need to be less obsessed with weather forecasts that offer the prospect of sublime sunsets and sunrises and, instead, head out when the weather is changeable and wet and…….more atmospheric. I love black and white photographs, so why don’t I take more of them? I need to go out with the intention of looking for monochromatic images, rather than simply seeing if a colour image will work when converted to black and white.
Producing books was fun and it certainly helped me remain sane during lockdown. And in hindsight, I think it forced me to consider my image making in a way that will help my photography enormously in the future. Developing this website has been a continuation of that same thought-provoking process. I’m now definitely my own harshest critic - with the exception of my son, Tomos, who has perfected the art of telling it to me as it is! (annoyingly, he’s almost always right in his observations!).
If your photos spend most of their time languishing on a hard drive, then can I encourage you to do something with them. Print them and hang them on a wall, produce a book, make your own greetings cards….. the possibilities are endless. You’ll find the challenge not only very satisfying but the process of analysing your images as others do, will also help lift your photography to the next level.