The Year Of Social Distancing
First off, I hope you and your family are doing well and staying safe in this crazy pandemic time! Start us off with a little background about yourself.
Hey, So I ‘m Dawson Wiegardt and sometimes on the internet I go by Pholyuhm. Where i’m from is always a tricky question because i consider a lot of places home. I’m originally from California, moved to Raleigh NC and now reside in Texas. I’m a professional photographer who doesn’t really specialize in one particular thing. Car photography is my favorite, but i also do portraits, landscapes and just take photos of whatever catches my eye.
Have you been able to cope well with all that is going on?
So coping is an interesting thing, for the first couple of days it was going really well, i had things to do and like everyone else was like “this can’t last forever”. After about a week and a half i went to a really dark place and just needed a change so ive been running in the mornings and trying to teach myself how to cook something more than basics and I’m doing a lot better now.
What are some things you're doing to past the time and keep your mind off the Coronavirus noise?
Passing time is definitely the key in all isn’t it? A few of the things i’ve been doing is like i said above and that’s running in the mornings. Right now in Texas its starting to get really hot which makes running suck but it also feels really good and rewarding. On top of that i’ve been trying to engage more with the twitter photography community, i know there are thousands of people, but i know how good it feels to get a like/retweet/reply from a stranger so i’m trying to do that more. Besides that its just a lot of binging shows, playing animal crossing, sending raw files to friends and editing random stuff.
I feel like since mostly everyone is unable to do photo-shoots with other people or collaborate in bigger groups; it has either, hindered some creatives output totally, or for some creatives it has given them the opportunity to expose their versatility in the "Creative Entrepreneur" market space. Has "social distancing" been beneficial to you or not? Keeping the loss of business revenue aside. I know we're all hurting in that department.
Social distancing hasn’t really hurt my creativity, i still try to get outside of my apartment as much as i can and just being cautious, but even just walking down the road and taking pictures and stuff feels good.
We rarely dip into the "political world" but curious to know your thoughts on how the Coronavirus situation is being handled?
I think this whole thing was handled really, really poorly. Say what you will about who’s in charge but this is a global pandemic, even that term sounds like something out of a Michael Bay movie. It needs to be taken as serious as possibly, obviously that is harder said but this definitely isn’t something to mess around with.
What is a quote or saying you'd like to leave us with that could help brighten someones day?
A quote or something to leave you with? so this one doesn’t really apply to what’s going on in the world right now but its one of my favorite lyrics. the song is Dark Sky (Skyscrapers) by Big Sean and in it he says “I guess it just took ten years for me to be an overnight success”. I’ve always like that because no matter what you do or who you are you have to put in the work to make something of yourself, but also if you are doing that your time is coming, maybe tomorrow, maybe in ten years but is is coming and don’t feel discouraged by others who are blowing up, but support their accomplishments.
