COVID – has it changed how you present in photos?

While the pandemic continues to ebb and flow, we are often confronted with a strangely sensitive topic: what is allowed in a photo at a single point in time?

We never had to worry about the position of people in photos before this. We never imagined we would have to consider if people are standing too close together, or if they should be seen wearing masks, or if they should be indoors or outdoors. The difficult part is that this seems to change every few months, too. Sometimes, we’re back to “living” mostly old-familiar lives again – but then we’re not soon after.

We have seen the awkwardness of clients wanting to normalise the use of masks in photos, then others who want to keep their visuals looking “pre-pandemic”. Times like showing a photo of a large crowd huddled together when we are told we should be social distancing – what do we do? For most of our clients, they haven’t been able to get new photos taken because of lockdowns, but the photos from past years don’t feel relevant at this current time. We don’t know the answers here, but it’s something we face in every project that uses photography at the moment.

For future historical purposes, embracing the COVID restrictions in photos isn’t necessarily a bad thing – but it’s something we’re not used to (yet). Whether we ever will get used to it, only time will tell. Whether it changes how we present businesses in photos going into the future, we are keen to see.