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.
Hello there my name is Efrain, I also go by Efron. Im a professional photographer from Malibu, CA. I specialize in landscape, portraiture and product photography. Before Covid I worked full time at a footwear company photographing their products but was laid off due to what’s going on. At the moment I’m dipping my toes in freelance and hoping to connect with companies to work with.
Have you been able to cope well with all that is going on?
I’ve been doing pretty good considering everything that’s going on. Ive been trying meditation and having a list of goals for each day as a way to keep sane.
What are some things you're doing to past the time and keep your mind off the Coronavirus noise?
One major thing that’s helping me is learning something new everyday. Since we have such powerful learning tools like google, YouTube, etc, there’s no excuse to take this as an opportunity to elevate your knowledge in whatever your passion is. For example, I’ve been struggling with doing video for a while so I’m watching tutorials everyday so I can eventually add that to my arsenal.
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.
Id say yes and no, like you said, it has given me the opportunity to be more creative with my work and putting me out of my comfort zone, which is GOOD! The downside of it is not being able to network with people in person since in my opinion networking is one of the BIGGEST and important part of running a freelance business.
We rarely dip into the "political world" but curious to know your thoughts on how the Coronavirus situation is being handled?
In my opinion I feel like it was badly handled. I feel quarantine should’ve been enforced back in early February and its STILL being handled not to the greatest urgency as it should be.
What is a quote or saying you'd like to leave us with that could help brighten someones day?
I don’t have any specific quotes but one motto that I have on my white board in my room is “If you want something you’ve never had, you need to do something you’ve never done”. I live by that to this day and its always pushed me to do things that make me uncomfortable and I hope to who ever is reading this, to try new things no matter how crazy or ambitious those things are! Just do what makes you happy.
