Take advantage of your time in quarantine to strengthen storytelling, expand knowledge of content composition, and differentiate social strategies. Read these tips by photographer, videographer, and live stream engineer, @celia_werner.
Sharpen Your Skills
Q: What photography/videography skills can creatives be strengthening while social distancing?
Strengthen Your Storytelling
In terms of photo/video skills people can be strengthening there’s two directions. The first direction is story. You need to learn to tell a story if you want to be successful in photo/video whether that’s in the actual visual content or the caption. People want a message in the content they’re consuming,and that’s what you as the creator need to bring. I’d recommend checking out a few posts from a creator you like, or a site you enjoy, and look at the p content and figure out what the story is and how they put it together. doesn’t mean you need a beginning, middle, and end like elementary school, but you need to make sure your information is connected,and creative. 
Be Calculative with Content Composition
The second set of skills are practical skills. Learning how to use light is an important one to start with. Take an object and move your camera around it to figure out how light works on different angles. Getting an understanding of lighting is really going to strengthen your ability to pick locations [post quarantine] and figure out where is going to be best to create your content.
The other thing you can do is learn about angles and shapes. Angles are important to you for a few reasons. Angles are the difference between looking down on someone’s face or looking up at their chin and nostrils. Unless it’s a style you’re going for, the latter is not usually preferred. One exercise you can do to learn angles is take an object or something like your face and look at what it looks like from different angles. You’ll learn what places and angles you like best and you can run with it from there! Lastly, shapes. Shapes are created in your images and you need to look at the whole frame to figure out what those shapes are. Whether it’s clouds, tables, trees or even someone’s face everything has a shape, and it’s up to you to find what shapes work in your photo. The composition of your photo can really affect the way it’s viewed by your audience. 
Differentiate Social Strategies
Q: How does your TikTok Strategy differ from your Instagram strategy?
TikTok and Instagram are 2 extremely different animals. TikTok and their users react really well to trends. Whether it’s dancing, mouthing the words to music, or doing crazy over the top content. Sometimes it’s hard to break through with original content. Having a cohesive theme on your channel definitely will help draw in and retain an audience. Instagram on the other hand is a bit different because it’s a different medium of content. Instagram for me is basically a magazine of everything I’m doing. My niche is obviously in the realm of photo/video so I broke down “what do people want to see from a photographer/videographer that they may not see every day.” So on my account I make sure there’s a mix of content that shows the work of a creator, the behind the scenes life of a creator, and advice from (you guessed it) a creator. Unlike TikTok which is mainly an entertainment platform, you have a chance to create content that not only entertains but informs. On Instagram, you are able to use photos, videos, lives, stories and captions to bring value to your audience. And that’s what I try and do in every post I create. Bring value, educate and answer questions. 
Be Consistent
Q: What have you learned as a creator in isolation?
Consistency really does make a difference. I started doing my daily live stream on Facebook 25 days ago and I’ve been going live every day around 12PM EST and people know to look at it. The organic views on my lives in the past month have risen 896% and the daily views are climbing each day. So when people tell you “consistency is key” they’re not just trying to make you create more content- it actually works.
Take Advantage of This Unique Time
Q: Anything else you would like to add?
I just want to say a few words about mindset. Right now is a tough time for everyone whether you’re worried about money, feeling trapped at home or trying to figure out your next move. Everyone is experiencing coronavirus differently, but there is one silver lining. We have time and it’s time to take the best advantage of it that you can. You can take the time to work on a passion project, time to create, and time to make a difference. I know this sounds super Ted Talk-y but it’s true. It’s a time where the world is on a break which may never happen again in our lifetime. So take advantage of the time to work on your passion projects and get off the couch. You want to be a content creator? It’s time to start.
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