What It's Like to Have COVID-19 // INFLUENCE Magazine

What It's Like to Have COVID-19 // INFLUENCE Magazine

INFLUENCE Magazine assigned us to photograph Christian Minor for a feature in their Summer 2020 issue. The story, written by Renzo Downey, was a personal account of Minor's experience during a health challenge, and the assignment took us to his home in Tallahassee for an environmental portrait session.

Photographing at someone's home for an editorial assignment always requires a different approach than working in a public space or a studio. You're in someone's personal environment, and the images need to feel authentic to who they are and where they live. The challenge is finding the spots within a home and around a property that give you the framing, depth, and light you need for a magazine-quality image while still respecting the subject's space.

This session also took place during the summer of 2020, which added logistical considerations that were new for all of us at the time. As Tallahassee photographers, we were navigating a period where the way we approached every assignment had changed. Working at a private residence meant being especially thoughtful about how we set up and how we interacted with the subject throughout the session. We adapted our workflow during that period to account for those realities while still delivering the kind of editorial photography our publication partners expected.

For the portraits themselves, we worked with our Canon mirrorless system and focused on finding compositions that placed Minor in a natural, relaxed context outside of his home. Home environments (indoor or outdoor) can be unpredictable from a lighting standpoint; you're working with whatever the architecture gives you in terms of window placement, ceiling height, and wall color, all of which affect how light behaves in the frame. As editorial photographers in Florida, we've photographed subjects in all kinds of residential settings, and the key is always to adapt quickly to the space rather than trying to force a look that doesn't belong there.

What we appreciate about assignments like this is that they require a quieter, more personal approach than a lot of our work. Not every editorial session happens at the Florida Capitol or in a studio. Sometimes the most compelling photography in Tallahassee happens at someone's home, and the job is to make that space feel as intentional and considered as any other location.

This feature was photographed by The Workmans for INFLUENCE Magazine and appeared in the Summer 2020 issue and was written by Renzo Downey. The Workmans are a husband-and-wife photography team based in Tallahassee, Florida, and we work with publications across the state of Florida, in Washington D.C. and around the United States. You can explore more of our editorial photography in the archive, see more of our work across our website and connect with us on how we can best serve you!