Posts
I played it extremely safe and did not venture outside the homestead except to seek life-supporting provisions such as food and fuel. Early on in the lock-down here in North Carolina, I dropped a note to the governor’s office asking if a photography enthusiast such as myself might be allowed to photo document the downtown Raleigh landscape — which I expected to be sparsely populated — as long as I observed proper social distancing.
I received no response to my inquiry. So rather than risk a few variable consequences for proceeding with my idea, I stayed home.
This post evolved after Kelley Jordan Schuyler, a professional photographer in Indianapolis, went on the Facebook page of my old neighborhood, Garfield Park-South, during COVID to pitch an idea to help bring some smiles and cheer in the neighborhood to help distract from the gloom and doom: She offered to walk through the neighborhood on a near-future evening to take portraits of residents with their families and/or fur buddies on their porches — and, most important — at a safe distance separating photographer and subject in observance of the community social distancing admonition.
Kelley was a relatively new resident of the neighborhood. I thought hers was a brilliant idea, and the neighborhood responded immediately and positively, so she did a walk-through on May 3, 2020. Not long afterward, she posted some of the photos on the Facebook page and offered to do additional portraits for anyone still interested.
Kelley pitched her idea by characterizing the portraits as “porch photos,” but in most instances, the subjects — as you can see from some of the samples in this post — were not under cover of the porch. They are seated on steps of or to the porch. I certainly understand that; a shooter trying to photograph anyone standing or seated on a porch would have to get close up, which would compromise needed social distancing space in the pandemic.
Kelley no doubt chose early evening for her shoot appointments to allow for almost uniform lighting —shade. She started at 6 p.m., which in Indianapolis meant the sun was low in the sky — which in turn means it was behind buildings, thereby preventing any chance of throwing unwanted white key light on people’s faces if they were facing the western sky.
“I'm delighted by the positive response our neighbors have had to this idea,” she said. “I couldn't tell if people would be skeptical about it, but it looks like I have a lot more work cut out for me — there’s a lot more interest!”
With her permission, I sprinkled this post with a few shots from her first wave of results, posted at the Facebook site Thursday. I found them uplifting. I didn’t want to steal all of her thunder, though. If you’d like to see the full gallery of first-round of porch photos at her site, just follow the link I dropped into this sentence.
