How have self-employed photographers stayed in business over the pandemic?

By Olivia Snaith-Cairns

Since the pandemic started, many people throughout the UK have lost their jobs, or have been put on furlough to keep them going through these hard times.

Self-employed workers especially have been massively affected since the UK was first put on lockdown. In 2020, the self-employed were identified as a ‘particularly vulnerable group’.

In response to the Covid-19 crisis, the government created actions to support self-employers. A grant became available for those self-employed people whose businesses have been affected; however, only those eligible could have access.

Antonello Zappa, 25, is a photographer who has now been self-employed for officially one year. “Since I mainly work in the music and events industry, all the festivals and travel bookings got cancelled which caused a big loss of work for me,” he said.

Zappa said he has been “able to work every now and then during the pandemic when jobs are coming up, but they are not as frequent as before”.

“Since the lockdown started, I have had more time to work on projects without having to deal with deadlines and had the chance to improve my skills by experimenting more and more,” says Zappa.

Zappa’s business has not had any support from the government since the pandemic started. “I do not enter the government’s self-employment scheme as I haven’t been self-employed for the past three years, but I’ve been getting help by Universal Credit which has helped me out while I haven’t been working fully.”

Travelling has been cancelled for over a year now for most people throughout the UK, which means virtually no jobs for those self-employed who travel or work abroad.

Wilfred Carter, student and self-employed photographer, said: “The largest proportion of my time was spent photographing festivals and concerts, which of course have stopped, so I have had to branch out into different forms of content creation, as well as new sectors such as automotive, and commercial photography.”

Carter also explained: “I am a lot more aware of the hygiene, and how overall I carry out my shoots. I’ve had to adapt how I work with models for example, and that definitely had an impact on my overall results and campaigns.”

Finding work throughout the pandemic has been tricky, Carter said. “At first no, because I needed to find what was still possible so that transition period from one sector to another was difficult. But once I changed it’s been ok.”

He is most looking forward to getting back into festivals once things get back to normal, he said, explaining that he “loves festivals the most, being able to meet new people, listen to the music I love all while getting paid is the dream combination”.

Some photographers also started businesses that allowed them to do family photoshoots from family homes, ensuring Covid procedures were in place. Some canny photographers have started doing “pandemic family shots” of families posing outside their own homes.