Practice Your Photography While You Stay At Home
Many people all over the world have to stay at home until the COVID19 crisis is brought under control.
You may be one of those, and you may wonder how you can continue with your photography.
Most photography, even most indoor photography involves leaving home and travelling to where you’re going to practice photography.
There are several ways to stay involved in photography, one way or another, even in these worrying times.
Here is a few suggestions for keeping your photographic endeavour alive while you stay at home.
Practice photography at home
It’s easy to pick up a camera, point it at a subject, and press the shutter without checking it.
When this happens, it usually turns out that the settings were wrong for the photo you took.
If you use your camera every day it’s much easier to check the settings as a matter of course.
When you don’t use it daily, that’s when you forget to check the settings before use.
So when you find yourself having to stay at home, keep using your camera.
Take photographs of anything in the house just to keep in the habit of using it.
Set up still lives to photograph and you might find that you like that type of photography.
Clean your photography gear
This won’t take up all the time you will have on your hands for weeks or months at home.
However take advantage of some of the time to give your camera equipment some care an attention.
In normal times it’s easy to forget to look after your gear as much as you should.
Don’t put it off, look after it as soon as you start to stay at home.
Learn photography online
There are a ton of photography courses online and you can always learn something from them.
Take advantage of this time out to take one or more of the many online photography courses.
Some are not very expensive, and there may be special deals during this awful time.
There are long and short courses, some comprehensive covering everything, and others that are more specific.
You can concentrate on your own specialised area or try a new area of photography to you.
Then there’s the possibility that you might consider that you could teach the instructor something.
Write about photography
You can use this time when you stay at home to write about your views and theories about photography.
This you can do this just for yourself without ever getting it published, if that’s what you prefer.
If you do want it published there are several ways in which you can do so.
You can look for blogs that will publish some of it in the form of guest posts.
Alternatively you could start a blog of your own, there are free blogging platforms.
Another way is to publish your writing in the form of an eBook, which you can self publish.
You can make it available for free or sell it online for whatever you feel it’s worth.
Launch your own online course
After you worked your way through some online courses, you could start your own.
There are platforms available that are prepared to give people the opportunity to teach online.
If you can convince yourself to start this, you could really get into it, and have another income stream.
It’s not for everyone, but some people thrive teaching others in this manner.
Read photography books
Read photography books or blogs, be they about the art, or photographers biographies.
There are books, like online courses, that teach you how to practice photography of all sorts.
Some photographers write about their theories rather than write in the form of lessons.
Such books will be a more interesting read to working photographers than how to books.
Then there are many fascinating photographers from the early days with great biographies that have been written about them.
Whatever type of photography book you like, there’s plenty to keep you reading through this time.
Watch films about photographers
Down through the years there have been many films made featuring and about photographers.
Once again some of these can make your time at home easier and more entertaining.
Some of these films are likely to be rather old and in black and white.
It’s so easy to find films now that you have no excuse not to watch some.
Plan your next outdoor photography
This period of lock down will not last forever, it will end in months, if not weeks.
When it does end you will be able to get back to taking photographs again.
Whether your photography is practiced outdoors or in venues that you travel to, start planning your next shoot.
Be ready to hit the ground running as soon as you don’t have to stay at home anymore.
