One Year of Shielding (Part 1)

Just over one year ago I started shielding. We used the phrase self isolating at first, but I guess that had negative connotations, so shielding it became.

I started when my partner Dinah developed Covid. It wasn’t a difficult decision, but after her relatively quick recovery and two weeks of isolation, she came to stay at my house whilst we decided how we were going to do this.

I needed to avoid all indoor social contact, and maintain my distance from any outdoor connection. Online deliveries, car park waiting, long local walks, baking, takeaway deliveries, working from home, moving all my work online, and zoom quizzes and conversations all became part of our coping strategies.

Looking back now I can see that the greatest impact was the lack of variety of experiences. All pubs, restaurants, cafes, theatres, cinemas and exhibitions were out, and still are. How strange to not visit any of those palaces of distraction and entertainment for a year.

Then of course there were the holidays. Or there weren’t. Trips to The Hay-on-Wye Festival, Majorca and Vietnam were all cancelled. Instead we had a couple of UK based cottage weeks (when travel restrictions allowed) and a week in Chippenham in the van. Not quite the European tour we had imagined!

Instead we had our two houses. They became our main variety. Spending 2 – 4 weeks in one, and then swapping for the other. Not quite the same, but some kind of variety.

As we reached the one year anniversary, I thought that I would create some photos to capture the feelings that this experience has brought. I’ve aimed to create quite claustrophobic photos. Each of them are of one of the windows in one of our homes, I’ll be doing the other one when we’re next there.

I’ve tried to create the photos so that the inside and outside are almost one place, but everything is tightly held within the window frame. I’ve used a 135mm equivalent lens which compresses the depth of the scene and a narrow aperture to encourage the idea that it is all in one small space. Because the outside features were lit by brighter light, I have used fill flash to bring an even tone to the whole photo.

How do they work for you?