What to Photograph During Lockdown

Monday 21 December 2020, 20:10 by Frédéric Paulussen | 5,352 views | 0 comments

This article was translated from Dutch with the help of AI. Read the original.

We are in lockdown again. In Belgium, we call it lockdown light, but the measures are much stricter in the Netherlands too. So, as photographers, we have to look for inspiration closer to home.

A lot of photographers find this difficult. We are used to getting in our car and being anywhere in the Benelux an hour later. And that gives us plenty of photography opportunities.

But that is not always possible now. So we have to look for new subjects to photograph. The perfect time to experiment.

In this article, I would like to list various things you can try. From home or in your immediate surroundings.

Take a self-portrait

As photographers, we are always busy putting other people in the frame, but we are actually rarely in front of the camera ourselves. Time to change that!

Set up a scene at home as you would for someone else's portrait and put your camera on a tripod.

As a Nikon user, the Snapbridge app is useful for adjusting the settings and focus from my smartphone. Other camera brands will certainly have similar options too.

You can of course always ask someone in your bubble to help. Although you set everything up, they can press the button.

Look for animals in your immediate surroundings

We all have animals around us. This could be a pet, but also animals outside. Even in a busy city like Brussels, I can do wildlife photography.

I am working on a series about city pigeons. Birds we see every day and usually find disgusting. Taking a look at the lives of our upstairs neighbours is an interesting exercise as a photographer.

Play with your smartphone's features

As photographers, we still look down on smartphone photography a little, but is that really necessary? You can get some really nice results with your smartphone. It can even inspire creativity.

Sometimes I take a photo with my smartphone that I would not otherwise take with my DSLR.
For example, my current smartphone has long exposure functions. Although they do not really use a long exposure, but rather some kind of photo stacking, they can produce some nice results.

Like this photo in Antwerp. A beautiful sunset and Huawei's 'silky water' function worked well together.

So take your smartphone out of your pocket and check all the camera functions.

Take product photos of your favourite objects

You are spending more time at home now. A place where you decide everything. So you also decide what is on the cupboard, for example. They may not be the most valuable objects, but they are important to you. Take some photos of them.

For me, these were small figurines I brought back from my travels in Botswana and Namibia, for example. They make good subjects for practising product photography.

It is also nice to travel back there mentally for a moment, and it is useful to have photos. You never know whether you might lose the figurines during a move.

Get your clothes dirty with macro photography

Head into the woods. There are beautiful mushrooms growing now that you can photograph. With a macro lens or a few extension tubes, you can get a long way. Enjoy some time in nature and bring a piece of it, virtually at least, home with you.

Then wash all the mud off and enjoy editing the photos in your lovely warm home. Wonderful!

Re-edit old photos

We all grow and learn something new every day, week or month. So your old photos may no longer be exactly how you want them. There are things such as timing, composition and subject that you cannot easily change any more.

Fortunately, the 'annoying' element is often the editing. 'Urgh, so over-edited. I really didn't know how to use vibrance subtly back then'. Well, you do now!

You will certainly still have the RAWs or unedited JPGs somewhere. Load them into Lightroom again and edit the photo as you would today. Then put the two edits next to each other. You will be surprised by how much better you have become!

These are of course just a few ideas. Let us know in the comments how this lockdown and the measures are affecting your photography!

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