Downtime With Bobbi Lane

"Dahlia against sparkle board. 80mm macro. Profoto A1x with Soft Bounce from camera right."

by Skip Cohen

We're all dealing with the same challenge, downtime with minimal things to do, but maximum energy and often creativity. So, wandering through cyberspace, I caught a post from one half of one of my favorite couples in imaging. If you know Bobbi Lane and Lee Varis, then it's hard to imagine what they'd be doing in life that wasn't related to something in photography or the arts.

Bobbi posted the image above with this caption:

Best of 2020 FLOWERS! I had a wonderful year photographing flowers in my house (got me out of the rut), in the yard and on location. I shot everything on the Fujifilm XT 4 using three lenses: 80mm f/2.8 macro, 50 mm f/1.0, and the 16-55mm f/2.8.

While all the images she shared were beautiful, I loved this one the most. But it wasn't just the image, but her "Best of 2020" approach. Bobbi isn't known for a lot of still life, but she's also not known to compromise on turning her visions into reality. (I found out after this post was published - She started out her career in large format product photography!)

There's a great line about growth only happening outside your comfort zone. While I doubt Bobbi had any thoughts about stepping into close-up work with flowers, it's great to see one of her projects that burned up the clock a little during downtime.

Remember, "hunkering down" is about your health, not about your business, skill set, or creativity!