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Expert advice: How to do remote photo shoots using Zoom

I’ve spent most of my career working as a photojournalist and director of photography, and I’m happy to have recently started working with Wonderful Machine as a freelance photo editor and creative consultant.

As a photographer, I work from my home base in Istanbul, completing assignments for places like The New York Times. But, just like everywhere else, COVID-19 has put a damper on normal human interactions in Turkey. So, when a photo editor at The New York Times gave me the option of shooting an assignment remotely, I was intrigued. In addition to health concerns, the three subjects I needed to photograph were worried about having their location disclosed for security reasons. And though it might have been possible for me to get to them, I had never tried a remote photoshoot; with all of us looking to minimize travel, I wanted to give it a go.

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BBC releases photos of 100+ empty popular TV show sets to spice up your Zoom & Skype calls

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With much of the world now working from home and communicating via Skype, Zoom and other online video conferencing platforms, the standard headshot against the backdrop of a plain wall or a messy bedroom has become a little old.

So, the BBC wants to help spice things up a little for you, and have released over 100 photographs of the sets, sans actors, from some of their most iconic TV shows including Fawlty Towers, Blackadder, Absolutely Fabulous and Doctor Who, as well as countless other shows that most people outside of the UK probably haven’t even heard of (but they’re popular here).

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How to turn your DSLR or mirrorless camera into a webcam without capture card

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We’we all used video calls more than ever over the past few months, and we may stick with virtual meetings and teaching for a while longer. There are ways to turn your DSLR or mirrorless into a webcam, but many of them require a capture card such as Cam Link. However, Kim Farrelly has an easier way. He turned his Fujifilm into a webcam without a capture card, and it works with other cameras, too.

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This “long-distance wet plate portrait” was taken in isolation thanks to video chat

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To keep themselves busy and creative in isolation, some photographers are turning to alternative shooting methods such as video chat. Shane Balkowitsch is one of them, and he did something that I find pretty extraordinary. He didn’t only conduct a portrait shoot online via video chat, which is amazing on its own. He created a wet plate portrait from his US home, photographing his friend in the UK via Zoom video call.

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Photographer uses video chat to take photos during coronavirus quarantine

Social distancing and self-isolation have pushed most of our social interactions online. We teach, learn, have meetings, and hang out with friends and family… all via video chat. But New York-based photographer Nikola Tamindzic has also found a way to use video chat for photoshoots. His project I am here, and you are where you are is a series of “quarantine portraits.” They were shot all over the world while neither the photographer nor his models left the safety of their homes.

We chatted with Nikola a bit about his project. He told us more about the idea, his shooting process, and how it has helped both him and his models cope with isolation. And of course, he also kindly shared some of the images he’s shot so far.

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