Should you still be visiting and photographing clients?

There’s not really that much to say about this video from Ryan at Small Moments Studios (which does contain some pretty strong language in parts). It pretty much speaks for itself. He’s been stuck in his house now for 23 days and his business is on hiatus, Why? Well, there’s kind of a global pandemic going on.

His message to photographers is a simple one – Stay at home. Ryan talks about posts he’s been seeing daily in online groups, and I’ve seen plenty of them in the groups I’m in myself, photographers wondering if they should keep going out to shoot clients. Overwhelmingly, the responses are “Don’t be f**king stupid! Stay at home!”.

A third of the planet is currently on some form of lockdown, and photography is not an essential service (with the possible exception of photojournalists). If you’re still out there shooting clients, you’re putting not only their lives at risk but also your own, as well as those of your family and anybody else you come into contact with while you’re out.

You can be infected and asymptomatic for up to three weeks before having any clue that you have coronavirus, and all the while you can be infecting others. Those clients you go to shoot and engage with can also be asymptomatic carriers and transmit it to you, which you then pass along to your family members at home.

So, don’t be stupid. Stay at home.

If you do choose to act like it’s business as usual, despite being subject to a lockdown, and keep interacting with clients and you or your family get sick as a result or have to face the potential legal consequences of infecting a client (after all, you’re the only person they’ve had outside contact with in the last month), then don’t cry about it afterwards.

You have nobody to blame but yourself.

h/t Amoree