Can a Photographer work remotely?

So many of us had to switch up our workspace for the safety of our own four walls due to the global pandemic and work from home. Technology made all this possible, thanks to virtual classrooms, Zoom calls, and specially designed interfaces to favor online work, but what if… I would adapt this concept to Photography? The art of photography is essentially capturing moments in the form of still images, with a camera. There are basically no other rules or boundaries. What if the model and photographer aren't even in the same room?  

Thanks to today's technology, almost every device has a usable front or rear camera, at least, so the hardest part is already fixed with two smartphones. I wanted to do my shoot during a video call, where I would assist the model in the placement of the camera, posing, and further instructions all through the call, while I take screenshots of the different poses. 

We chose What's App as our platform, which had the only downside of a slight drop in quality of the image, and that I couldn't make my call window disappear entirely, therefore I had to calculate in additional negative space for that tiny window, which I would crop anyways. 

After all the screenshots were collected, I edited them in Lightroom, where the real magic began. People often forget how much work is put into the finished images in the process of editing, which takes much longer than the shoots themselves. 

I was surprised how well these turned out, even though they aren't comparable to RAW DSLR shots, but this wasn't the point. I wanted to stretch the boundaries of photography and realized that this requires as much problem solving as a real shoot in the streets or indoors. I had to adapt to a scene I wasn't familiar with, or couldn't test in real life, measure distances via the screen of my phone, and frame my model with the inevitable crop in my mind. 

Really want to do more of these, since they are so much fun, and are honestly a LOT more convenient than traveling with all my gear, which is still my favorite thing at the end of the day. Recommend you try this out with a friend, just for the fun of it, have a lovely day, and take some great pictures!