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.
To start, my name is Sam Smith, and I’m a photographer from Toronto, Canada. I focus more on portraiture and editorial shooting, and have been professionally freelancing for almost 6 months now.
Have you been able to cope well with all that is going on?
Honestly, it’s been a bit of a struggle. I recently came to New Zealand in January for what was supposed to be 6 months of shooting landscapes, working on my portfolio... being over 16,000km away from all my loved ones during this fiasco is taking a toll on my mental health.
What are some things you're doing to past the time and keep your mind off the Coronavirus noise?
Given the fact that I’m living abroad right now, I luckily have the resources to focus on a creative outpouring. Re-editing old photos (as I’m sure everyone’s been doing), painting as often as I can, and taking french lessons to bring back the fluency I used to have as a student. Honestly, I’ve just been trying to avoid the reality of my situation, but sticking your head in the sand only goes so far.
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 has, for the most part, been a kick in the teeth. I’m lucky enough to be staying with a host family with two daughters I could convince to model for me, but it doesn’t replace the satisfaction in my work that comes with collaborating with other creatives.
New Zealand being in a nationwide lockdown at the moment means I can’t really leave the property I live on, so I’ve been focusing on self portraits more and more as time goes on.
We rarely dip into the "political world" but curious to know your thoughts on how the Coronavirus situation is being handled?
As far as the political side of this situation goes, I’m very fortunate to be both a) living in a country where the politicians are taking this seriously and b) having my family living back in Canada, where our prime minister has said its the well-being of the people first and the economy second. I can honestly be nothing but grateful towards the swiftness of their response. I look to my friends living in the U.S. and can’t fathom the logic behind their presidents response and behavior.
