Reflections on a Pandemic...From a Safe Distance

35-150mm (46mm), F/5.0, 1/500th sec., ISO 400

Click the image above to check out this great lens!

Intro by Chamira Young

Years from now when someone mentions 2020, it will undoubtedly conjure up foreboding images of masks, copious amounts of hand sanitizer...and of course, precious toilet paper! However, the year's not over yet, and there's still room to stuff it with as much creativity as safely possible! While it may currently require some modifications to your process (i.e. social distancing), there are still fun projects you can do to bust that pesky boredom during this slow season for your business.

In the article below, photographer Michael Schmitt shares how he is managing to stay creative and serve his community despite the pandemic. We love how he goes above and beyond while using his Tamron 35-150mm VC OSD zoom lens to take families’ portraits from the other side of their windows.

Check out the post below. We love the dedication of the Tamron team to bring you amazing lenses and inspiration to keep your creative juices flowing!

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Reflections on a Pandemic

By Jenn Gidman
Images by Michael Schmitt
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Like many of us, when commercial photographer Michael Schmitt found himself suddenly confined to his home in Portland, Oregon, due to the coronavirus pandemic, he also saw much of the work he’d had lined up for the next few months vanish. Instead, his time in lockdown has been spent taking long walks with his camera—“at least I’ve been able to scout for future locations to shoot”—and with his children, an eighth-grader and high school senior, having longer meals and discussions together and expanding on the kids’ life skills. “Our boys are learning how to cook more than they ever knew how to,” he says.

Then one afternoon in mid-March, Michael was working in his yard when he happened to catch a glimpse of his son in the house, through a window. “That was the first weekend after school had been canceled,” he says. “We didn’t yet have a shelter-in-place mandate, but we were just starting to go into isolation mode. I happened to spot my son, with the reflection of my wife outside caught in the window, and I thought, ‘That would make a really cool image.’”

35-150mm (50mm), F/7.1, 1/640th sec., ISO 800

Michael decided to take other photos like that, but though he’d initially planned to photograph just his own family and some neighbors as a way to document this time in history in Portland, locals soon got wind of the project. “I’ve now photographed about 35 families,” he says. “And I’m not asking for payment for these portraits. This is a way for me to give something to people to remember this time by, as well as a way for me to stay creative while I’m not officially working.”

35-150mm (41mm), F/7.1, 1/250th sec., ISO 100

The Tamron 35-150mm VC OSD portrait zoom was the lens Michael opted to use for this project. “The color and definition quality this lens offers gives my images a timeless quality, which is exactly the look I’m going for,” he says. “That, in addition to the wide range of focal lengths at my disposal, plus the Vibration Compensation feature that allows me to shoot handheld without having to bump up the ISO too much, has made this the perfect lens for what I’m trying to capture with these images.”
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35-150mm (41mm), F/4.5, 1/250th sec., ISO 400

​Read the full post here.