How to fight boredom using photography during isolation

Being stuck at home when you don’t want to be locked indoors just sucks. For photographers who can no longer head out to photograph their usual subjects, with not much to shoot at home (or is there?), boredom kicks in real fast. And for creatives, boredom can be the worst thing of all to have to live with. But it can be beaten!

Photo1x1 wants to help in the fight against boredom during these times, with a new video series – the goal of which, besides fighting boredom, is to allow as many people as possible to participate. It started a few days ago with some interesting tips for shooting everyday objects in creative ways, even if the only camera you have access to is a phone.

Once you’ve had enough of photographing apples using your smartphone as a light source, you can move on to part 2, where we see how to make an easy DIY softbox from just a cardboard box (come on, we’ve all got Amazon Prime boxes lying around somewhere these days) and a couple of sheets of printer paper.

Each day’s lesson builds on the previous day, expanding your abilities and options, and while the principles are good for all photographers to practice and refine and challenge themselves, they’re great for beginners or even those that just want something interesting and photographic to do with their kids with things they already have available. There’s no need to curse the closed local shops or be upset that Amazon Prime is prioritising medical and essential supplies.

Part 3 takes some of the lighting principles from Part 1 as well as the softbox made in Part 2 and extends things even further to create a mini tabletop photo studio for products and other small items.

You can check out the complete playlist here, where no doubt future parts will be added as they’re released. Depending on when you’re reading this, it may already contain more than the three videos shown above.

While the series is designed to be accessible to as many people as possible, even smartphone users, limiting yourself to the bare basics can be an interesting challenge for seasoned professionals, too. And it can also be a lot of fun.

How are you using photography to help stave off the boredom at home?