Photography during lockdown has been heavily restricted. The financial impact during this Covid 19 crisis has been heavy. I have been in regular contact with my photography clients. As well as my photo retouching colleagues. We have all lost income. This is a downside of the freelancing industry, we only earn when we get work.
As I have mentioned before I am not only a photo editor, I am also a professional photographer. I specialise in event photography. One of my pre lockdown clients was the National Auditorium in Alicante. I regularly photograph and edit their live concerts.
I was pleasantly surprised when I got a phone call from the artistic director last Saturday. Asking me if I was available to photograph a concert that evening. Fortunately I had nothing planned. Easing of the restrictions allowed me to go to Alicante to photograph the concert.
Photography during lockdown
It was a strange experience. There were so many restrictions in place when entering the building. For me the temperature scan I had to do was by far the most surreal. The doors to the concert hall open at least an hour earlier than normal. This was to allow a slow trickle of people to take their seats. The auditorium can accommodate over 100000 people. This time the total number that entered was a little over 200 people.
The orchestra spread out completely on the stage. This made me nervous. It was going to be more tricky to photograph, as the normal aesthetics of how I photograph had been broken. The concert lasted only an hour. This added extra pressure on me as I have almost two hours to photograph the concert. I did not have the luxury of time, and had to rush quite a bit to get all the photographs needed for my brief.
The concert was fantastic. My movement around the auditorium was limited but I managed to get all my photography done. On the upside of all the covid 19 restrictions, the car park was empty and I managed to leave without the usual traffic delays.
For me it was a real pleasure being able to do photography during lockdown. And to top this, I was even more happy when I was downloading and editing the photos. Instead of using my trusted photo editing tool, Adobe Photoshop. I use Adobe Lightroom to import and retouch the photos. I have various develop presets that I have created for my event photography. Event photography is basically a reportage style of photography. With this plus the fact that I cannot use a camera flash during the concert, makes my photo editing a little more challenging.
My develop presets speed up my digital photo editing. with one click and a few tweaks I can enhance the darker areas of the photos and add a personal tone to my edits.
This was the first live concert performed in Spain after the covid 19 restrictions. It was an absolute pleasure to have been able to photograph a live event after the lockdown restrictions. Better still I was happy to be able to put my photo editing services to work as well. If you need a photographer for any aspect of photography, feel free to check out my website. Alternatively if you need me to edit your photos, get in touch with me.
