As my online classes are about to start this coming week, days of having to think about which k-drama will I next binge-watch or what creative outlet will I learn for the day; might come to a halt—well just for a while until school requirements subside.
In the past six months of staying at home due to the lockdown caused by the pandemic, all of us had experienced some struggles—be it physically, mentally, and financially. But we tend to cope up, and we find outlets, we think of strategies and we take our time to reprioritize things in life. I took this time as a chance to learn new things, like editing and phone photography.
It all started with learning how to do simple illustrations. I tried shooting some self-portraits and then watch Youtube video tutorials on what I’ll do. But as I was having shoots and having countless shots of myself in my bedroom or my mom’s—cause she has better lighting in her room—I’m still not satisfied with the shots, I was like finding something, always thinking that something is missing or lacking in the photo that I have. It came to me that I am still aiming for that “studio-like” photo, the ones I see on the magazines I use for inspiration or on my mood board on Pinterest. But my problem is I’m short on budget due to the quarantine—there’s no baon—also, I can’t go out of the house. So, I’m stuck in having my bedroom wall as my background and sunlight for my lighting. I started to lose interest in what I was aiming for, but thanks to Pinterest and Youtube, I was inspired and had the motivation to learn new things during this lockdown. I searched for “how to change the background in photoshop?”, as I was learning the basics, I mixed some of the things I learned from the video.
I look for inspirations on Pinterest and then create a mood board for a particular “shoot” that I’ll do. Also, magazines that I currently have, and I always look at BJ Pascual’s book, “Push” for poses and pegs. He has always been an inspiration for me and one of the reasons I had an interest in photography. I also skim through my Instagram feed to have incentives from other creatives.
When I plan to have a shoot and had completed the mood board for the shoot, I treat it like it was a big thing. I like to sleep early and do the daily skincare routine to avoid pimples—for less editing. I need to be up soon to catch the morning sunlight that hits my window for better lighting. It’s hard to adjust the settings because I only use my phone unlike with an actual camera, you can do anything. But there are times that I’m active during midnight hours, and there's no sunlight coming through my window, or I’ll be downstairs so that I won’t disturb my mom in her sleep. I’ll just rely on a study lamp—and results are quite good, I might say. But I do push myself to wake up as early as six in the morning to do some morning
chores, have breakfast, take a bath, fix my hair—I have curly hair, so it takes some time to fix it for a specific shoot that I do, but sometimes I just let it be.
After that, I’ll proceed to set up my tripod and connect my phone to my laptop and have it on screen recording on QuickTime so that I’ll see where in the frame I should stand and what pose I will do. When I feel satisfied with some of the photos, I’ll then airdrop it to my laptop for post-production, which is the hard part and takes time to do. Tip: use a mouse and don’t rely on your trackpad if you just have a laptop with you.
I had long hours of editing and multiple back-and-forths from photoshop, lightroom, snapseed, and sometimes vscocam, having non-stop sharing and asking my close friends for their opinions on my photo. It is good to ask people to give their criticisms on your work so you can adjust and improve your work for a better output. Then, if I found the right edit for the photo and achieved my peg, I could now upload it to Instagram and share it with others.
Having this photoshoot has helped to keep me sane during this time. Also, because of this, I learned some new things that I didn’t know before and boosted my creative side. I think learning new things especially for people like me who is still in college is a perfect thing because you might find an outlet for your other talents—and you’ll not be used to in just doing one thing.
Being productive is quite satisfying and fulfilling—especially now that we don’t have many things to do, but don’t push yourself too hard. There are times after I’ve done some photoshoots and edits, I feel so drained like my creative juices were squeezed to the last drop, and it's OK. When you see other people being productive on social media, don’t pressure yourself to also be productive. It’s ok to slow things down, appreciate the outputs you’ve done, and take that time to rest and gain the energy that you’ll need soon.
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