The Covid-19 pandemic lockdown has hit pretty much every industry and livelihood hard in the last few weeks, and it shows no signs of letting up any time soon. This lockdown has pretty much put a stop to most wedding, event, and portrait photographers work, let alone their creative outlets! Not only are there not any weddings currently happening, if there were, it’d be a very unsafe and unwise thing to do! Well, one photographer has found a creative way to keep taking portraits while in self-isolation – Facetime!
Tim Dunk is a Yorkshire based wedding & portrait photographer ranked in Rangefinder Magazine’s top 30 wedding photographers in the world last year, and he wasn’t about to let the current lockdown keep him from creating!
“Like the rest of the world, the Covid-19 virus hit and I was left stuck at home with no real way of safely doing the thing I love doing. This has had its financial impact, of course, but it also left me in a place where my options to get creative, socialise, or just hang out with people making images together, was suddenly reduced to zero.
We are privileged in the UK to live in homes with a thousand ways to communicate around us, and I started to think around ways I could effectively make portraits of my friends, and keep my brain stimulated. I to put a shout out to some friends to see if anyone was up for trying to use the fairly basic imaging capabilities of FaceTime, initially just as a fun experiment, and a way of collaborating with my creative mates around the world.”
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Detailing his process in PetaPixel, Tim explains the everything involved in creating these images during his calls with his clients and friends, showing how he “walks” around the home to find interesting light and settings/props to use, then uses Adobe Lightroom to edit the images. Embracing the “poor quality” of shooting through a remote-device with limited control.
“At any time this would have been fun – as a creative exercise and way of finding a new way of making portraits; but in this bizarre time we find ourselves, outside of our normal experience or comprehension, it made total sense that we made pictures in a new way too. The fact that it sparked such enthusiasm in people, resonated with them at a time where we are distanced from each other, from the world, is just bloody lovely as a human being. These images feel like tiny threads from one home to the next, waiting to be pulled again.”
So far, Tim has shot over 50 FaceTime photo sessions and is donating £10 ($12) from each session to a UK based food bank charity, The Trussell Trust. If you want to get involved, you can book a session with Tim on his website.
See More of Tim’s Work Here;
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*Images & story shared with permission
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