What to Photograph During Quarantine: Simple At-Home Photography

Wow, what unprece­dent­ed times we are cur­rent­ly fac­ing. I hope that every­one read­ing this is healthy and safe. Are you wash­ing your hands 100 times a day, prac­tic­ing social dis­tanc­ing, and self-quar­an­tine? We live in Ger­many and are now on day 7 of these prac­tices, and I, for one, am going absolute­ly crazy. Now, don’t get me wrong… I am incred­i­bly grate­ful for my health, the health of my fam­i­ly, and the fact that gov­ern­ments are being so dili­gent, but I am an extro­vert!!! An extreme extro­vert and this is hard, real­ly hard.

Like every­one else, I have can­celled book­ings and in-per­son class­es for the next few months. I am stay­ing moti­vat­ed to do what I tell my stu­dents to do and “pick up my cam­era and take pho­tos for 15 min­utes a day.” Pick­ing up my cam­era every day is imper­a­tive to my cre­ativ­i­ty and to remain­ing intuitive. 

I am in love with my cam­era.  I have a Canon 6D Mark II, and it’s incred­i­bly easy to use. 

All that being said, what do I photograph during quarantine? 

Well, I have an old­er teenag­er and a young adult, both of who are often moody and real­ly dis­like hav­ing their pic­tures tak­en with­out a lot of notice, prop­er light­ing, and the per­fect backdrop. 

How­ev­er, I have an amaz­ing­ly will­ing dog. 

You’d be sur­prised at the catch­lights you can get in an ani­mal. They make a great sub­ject to pho­to­graph dur­ing quar­an­tine since they are always home with you! If you have a cat or dog at home, prac­tice plac­ing them in the light stream­ing through your win­dows or catch them as they are sun­ning them­selves, don’t for­get to use one of the rules of composition…perhaps the rule of thirds, the rule that states your eye nat­u­ral­ly falls to the out­er third of an image and is the most pleas­ing to the eye.

Anoth­er thing I enjoy doing is chal­leng­ing myself to make ordi­nary objects look a lit­tle less bor­ing.  Again, using the com­po­si­tion rules to help me do so. 

And knock on wood, so far, we are still allowed to take walks and be out­side.  I have def­i­nite­ly been tak­ing advan­tage of the quiet­ness of the streets to cap­ture shots that are usu­al­ly too busy to catch. I’ve been tak­ing walks on the riv­er and using “gold­en hour” to cap­ture some fan­tas­tic pho­tographs dur­ing quarantine. 

So, while it’s not easy to be away from my stu­dents and clients, my online class­es are help­ing, and I have found that this week of qui­et has allowed me to chal­lenge my cre­ativ­i­ty and cre­ate some beau­ti­ful images. What peo­ple, places, or things are you find­ing make good sub­jects to pho­to­graph dur­ing quarantine?

I hope that you stay healthy, enjoy your fam­i­ly, and pick up that camera!

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Learn how to use man­u­al mode and take con­trol of your cam­era so that you can cre­ate the amaz­ing images that you’ve always imag­ined with the online Begin­ners Pho­tog­ra­phy Essen­tials Pro­gram!