Virtual Synergy
As a photographer who enjoys capturing everyday moments and familiar people, quarantine paused my portraiture activity and forced my camera to rest on the highest shelf for a few weeks. In April, during one of my zoom calls with classmates at Rutgers-Newark, my friend Ronald Solano shared photos captured by Tim Dunk through FaceTime, which felt natural and real. Inspired by his work, I initiated a portrait session through zoom for the first time with Natalia Ziarno, on her birthday.
NATALIA ZIARNO
Natalia: “Look at this pile of clothes as my background haha”
Nadya: “Can you place yourself in the corner and put your screen on the floor?”
Before this pandemic, I used to take everyday objects that I would find on the streets as my photo props. For this shoot I used an old piece of broken headlight in front of the lens.
Bad internet connection kept making it difficult to capture a good shot, until I started to embrace those screen glitches — internet connection is unstable — and included them as part of the experience.
RONALD SOLANO
The next zoom photoshoot happened much later, after managing my last, and very busy, semester of college. This time I took photos of Ronald Solano, one of the first models to ever pose for my portrait work. This shoot made me realize how close of a collaboration we experience as model-and-photographer, especially through the web cam. My job is to capture what the model has constructed as their composition. I don’t control their environment, their light, their backgrounds; I can only control what I capture on my computer screen. With this realization, I started experimenting with colored papers as graphic elements that interact with the model.
A few days later, we switched positions, and Ronald took photos of me through zoom. It was magical and it inspired me to take self-portraits again, after a long time. These experiences have made me appreciate my work as a photographer in a whole new way, to allow people to see themselves from a different angle and see their beauty. And to be on the other end (as a model) as someone else is trying to capture my “other” angle, helped me connect with people in a whole new way.
I also realized that trust must be established — model controls the setting while photographer captures and interacts with all the visual elements — which feels more collaborative than normal portrait photoshoots.
MARYLIN GOMES
This marks the beginning of the zoom-in-the-dark shoots. Marylin always encourages me to experiment. This time I used flash and colored paper as a filter on top. I had not cleaned my computer screen in a while which resulted in a muddy-like texture in the reflection from the flash.
While in the session I would send Marilyn a snapshot taken from my phone to show her the outcome. She thought they felt eerie and we decided to work on a poster series with them (still in the works).
Due to our constant exchange, this shoot felt dynamic. We were connected through constant movement, adjusting, and trying again and again to get that perfect shot.
N: “My fingerprints are gross, but they look kind of cool here”
M: “Oooh this looks ghostly”
N: “Yeah, like a soul is leaving your body”
N: “But then this shot looks like you’re about to say ‘And you’re watching a Disney channel’”
