Highway to Hell and COVID-19
My friend Chris Gampat, Editor in Chief and his team at The Phoblographer featured our Classic Album Covers from our apartment during Quarantine.
As many things do, this all came about in an organic way, a comment here a picture there an email and boom, a simple idea born of desperation and opportunity became an online competition with global reach that gave photographers struggling for a creative outlet with hope and a goal.
This whole thing started because a photographer friend of mine in London, Phil Adams, took a picture with his kids and posted it on Instagram. I have a relationship with LastoLite in England so I sent them a link to my friend Phil’s photo on Instagram because I knew they would get a kick out of it. They had the idea to make it into a social media game and asked what I thought. I thought it was brilliant because it was exactly the sort of fun creative challenge I needed. If I was feeling lost as a result of this global pandemic, then I knew a lot of other people were too. Normally I am shooting 3-5 days a week on full production jobs so when every single job I had on the books for months disappeared almost overnight it was totally discouraging. I went from being at the top of my game as a photographer to a 2nd grade homeschool teacher the next day and honestly I was really struggling with it.
Additionally, I didn’t realize how much I missed the very act of shooting. I hadn’t shot a single photo for more than a month and it was killing me. In a way the loss of the creative process had amplified my sense of loss and despair. I needed some way to channel my creative impulses and this idea was perfect.
Check out the great article with some of the camera and gear on The Phoblographer.
