Photographer Creates Amazing Portraits Using Facetime During Lockdown

I'm Tim Dunk, a wedding and portrait photographer based in Yorkshire in the UK.

Like the rest of the world, the Corona virus hit and I was left stuck at home with no real way of safely doing the thing I love. This has had its financial impact, of course, but it also left me in a place where my options to get creative, socialise, or just hang out with people making images together, was suddenly reduced to zero.

We are lucky in the UK to live in homes with a thousand ways to communicate around the world, and I started to think around ways I could make portraits of my friends, and keep my brain stimulated.

I to put a shout out to some friends to see if anyone was up for trying to use the fairly basic imaging capabilities of FaceTime, initially just as a fun experiment, and a way of collaborating with my creative mates around the world.



The restrictions of the technology I've been using (FaceTime, an iPhone, and my normal editing software), propelled us to be more thoughtful in our approach.

Partners were employed as lighting stands, tripods, subjects and props. Phones were balanced on precarious Jenga-towers of random stuff, or blu-tacked to walls. 

These self isolation spaces were searched for pockets of light and colour, mood & humour. I've shot in lounges and wardrobes and poly tunnels, allotments and staircases.

Props were pulled from shelves and cupboards, or cat beds and cribs. I've shot people living within shouting distance, and stayed up way past my bedtime shooting people on the other side of the world. The shoots were fast & fun, locked into a short time frame and a similar visual language. They involved couples, individuals, children & pets. All of us in the same situations. All of us shut away.

At any time this would have been fun - as a creative exercise and way of finding a new way of making portraits; but in this bizarre time we find ourselves, outside of our normal experience or comprehension, it made total sense that we made pictures in a new way too. The fact that it sparked such enthusiasm in people, resonated with them at a time where we are distanced from each other, from the world, is just bloody lovely as a human being. These images feel like tiny threads from one home to the next, waiting to be pulled again.

More info: timdunk.com