Our guest blogger, Lamar Francois, autistic photographer from Nottingham, opens up about his experience of lockdown and how he overcame these challenges following the Covid pandemic. The six months before the Covid pandemic hit was quite frantic, I was working part time as well as building my events photography business, with a number of commissions especially in towards the end of Set against this, I found the initial lockdown to be a relief and a chance to take a break, having been working since I graduated in — and be free from needing to live up to external expectations.
As time went on after the initial relaxation of restrictions in July things became challenging financially and emotionally, especially around October in the run up to Christmas and the November lockdowns.
Economically, it become apparent that I would be unable to return to the part time job which I had previously — and with continuing restrictions it had become apparent that I would have few opportunities with commissioned work — although I was able to create some merchandise, including my popular Nottingham Calendar to support AEM which proved a successful venture. Thankfully, I had some extremely supportive clients who were able to pay me in advance for projects which I will be doing in the coming months — as well as the Princes Trust who had put together an emergency fund which I was able to access having been supported by them in their business development programme in From an autistic point of view, I have quite enjoyed the isolation coming with lockdown especially in public from a sensory point of view with there being limits on people gathering.
In common with many on the spectrum I do want to enjoy and connect with others — but oftentimes many of the environments which are set up to facilitate this can be difficult to manage from a sensory perspective. To deal with that I eventually spent some time volunteering with Woven St Johns in Bilborough - using my DSLR to film their church services for online live-streaming especially during the most recent lockdown, which got me serving others and learning some different skills with video production.
This year has made it apparent how fortunate I am to be able to pursue a career as a photographer with the difficultly of the past year. This will run alongside my online shop in which I will be looking to refresh in the coming months with some new photographic prints and merchandise on a one-off basis. Advice and guidance for parents and carers of autistic children are provided during regular online advice sessions.
