Oh, Covid-19. How you have disrupted my life. As a wedding photographer primarily, you have forced me to get creative with my funds and find ways to try to NOT LOSE MY HOUSE in the next two years. The wedding that you have forced people to move has cemented the fact that I will not be able to get a salary over the next year. Great job.

I have also stopped shooting altogether. People are confined in their homes and I literally have no access to them! Ooorrr dooo iiiiii?

It’s hard for me to do NOTHING. Maybe it’s the fact that I have been working from home for the last 10 years and my home is … my workspace but Quarantine has been hard on me – as I’m sure many of you. As a result, in the last few weeks, I have tried to find ways to keep busy! First, I became really good at updating my personal Instagram. Finally! Since I only updated that profile every few weeks. Then, I became inspired by the Quarantine and made a little Mermaid Parody. After a while, I started to really miss photography and looked for a way to keep photographing my couples. TheFrontSteps projects seemed like a good idea for half a second until I realized that the government truly asked everyone to #STAYHOME. Driving over to people’s homes didn’t quite go with the new laws. While browsing on Instagram one evening, I noticed that a few photographers were actually doing FaceTime sessions. Whhattt ?? How the hell could that be a thing? But it is and I tried it!

Let me explain how it works. There’s actually two ways of doing it. 1) You can take a photo of your own phone.  Some people are making fun little backgrounds with fabric and flowers and placing their phones in it in order to take a photo of it with their professional camera. 2) Directly off Facetime. FaceTime has a feature that allows you to take a screenshot of the screen of the people you are talking to. This screenshot is extremely low resolution but doesn’t have your own face in it. Then, we take these images and bring them in our editing software and voila! Photos for people.

While trying this I found that these photos are truly dependant of which phone you both have, what firmware it’s upgraded to, the type of lighting there is in the house, how many people, how much WHITE is in the photo… etc etc.. These sessions are extremely unpredictable and you have to rely on your client to place the camera exactly how you want it to make sure you get the shot you envision. It’s a challenge! Luckily … challenges are super fun for me! Plus, it truly makes us (photographers) practice communication and posing with clients.

So I did it! And I’m loving it! clients are really loving it too! one of my clients said: “It makes us forget about quarantine for a little bit”. The photos that result from these sessions are low resolution (too low for print) but I’m so happy how much joy it brings clients. It’s really keeping my own spirits up.

Here’s a few from the recent sessions!