The Monday Photo

Here I am, at dusk, on my own doorstep. This photo was taken as part of my Distance Project, where I am photographing what people are doing differently under lockdown.

I’m affected by the lockdown just like anybody else, so like many of my Distance Project photos, there’s a good two metres either side of the subject, myself.

Quite a lot of my photos from that project were taken while down on one knee, so I’ve duplicated that by setting the tripod to the same sort of height.

The project is going well, and I have a list of subjects still to cover; the list keeps growing as I’m given leads by my subjects, and when lockdown restrictions are changed. In years to come, this is going to be a strange set of photos to look back on, but I’m hoping this project will be a useful historical resource.

I have little idea about how this project will end; that’s not really under my control and neither should it be. I will just keep taking photos until it’s all over.

This, by the way, is one of the few self portraits I’ve made in years. It’s a selfie, I suppose, and I used to make them quite often with my film camera and a nice wide lens, held at arm’s length. The lens and camera were not too heavy, and it was easy.

When I went to digital photography in 2009, this all stopped. I soon found that the camera and lens combination I’d bought was much too heavy to hold at arm’s length, for a self portrait. That’s when I stopped taking selfies, long before they were even called that.

I will be showing you new photos from the project on Thursdays, as long as the lockdown and its effects continues.

(Edited, September 2021)
As well as being a Monday Photo, this is just one of many posts from The Distance Project. That link will take you back to the very first posts, but if you want to see them in reverse order, just click on the link in the categories list that's on every page.

The project ran from April 2020 to September 2021.