Creatives during COVID-19 Times – Meet Roy Reed, website designer and photographer
Interview Series with creatives continues – Creatives during our COVID-19 era, how does it affect us.
Meet Roy Reed, the freelance website designer and photographer
A casual chat as if we met over coffee at the local cafe- if only COVID-19 was not here. In this interview series over coffee and tea, I meet up with Joe Diaz in USA, Melinna Kaminari in Athens Greece, Roy Reed, London, UK and Andy Carolan, Norwich UK. Read all interviews in the categori ”Cafe stories”
Stefan: What do you work with. What is your title?
Roy: A bit of a mouthful, but I’m a semi-retired freelance website designer and photographer. I’ve pretty much stopped doing website design. After 25 years (I did my first website in 1995) I really don’t feel I’ve got much left to give. I still acts as admin and do updates on five sites for old clients, but that’s about it.
S: We live in very different times. The Corona Coved-19 virus have hit almost all countries in the entire world, when this is written. What was your initial feeling when you understood it would hit home, where your at?
R: To be honest, I’ve been expecting something like this to happen for years. When it actually happened my response was very selfish – why did it have to happen now that I’ve actually got the time to explore my own personal projects.
S: With the initial actual hit of Coved-19, where you working on a project at the time?
R: I’m currently working on a project photographing all of the Cornish parish churches. I’m photographing the interiors and exteriors, but especially making 360° panoramas of the interiors. So far I’ve done about 100 and there are about 225 in total. I was due to go to Cornwall for most of March, but that’s been put on hold for the foreseeable future. Cornish Parish Church Panoramas Cornish Parish Church Photos
S: Many businesses have been hurt a lot. Many companies either layoff staff, while others simply go bankrupt within weeks. Have this affected the clients you work with? And have this affected you as well?
R: Being semi-retired, I’m already drawing on my pension. At one time I was expecting to be fairly comfortable in retirement, but some bad advice in the 1990s combined with the financial crisis in 2007-8 wiped out most of that. Luckily it’s still just about enough to live on.
S: During these initial weeks or months, depending on where you live, how do you plan, if at all, for how and what you as a Creative can do, or plan to do, to stay productive. Do you hibernate or keep on working?
R: As an architectural and landscape photographer there’s literally nothing I can do without being able to go outside. I’ve got most of my archive of about 75,000 images up-to-date with regards to tagging, indexing, etc., so I’m not sure what I’ll be doing to keep occupied in the coming weeks.
S: When we all eventually comes out of all this, where do you hope to be, as a Creative on day one? Can you envision anything of the future ahead?
R: I’m really looking forward to being in Cornwall with my cameras and a tripod in the middle of Bodmin Moor or somewhere on the North Cornish Coast without being able to see a single person and just staying there for the whole day watching the light change.
S: If you would give any sort of word of hope to us all and people in our various creative fields, what would that be?
R: I think that once the threat of coronavirus has dissipated the future will be good for those people who have survived financially. People are starting to realise how important the creative industries are to people’s sanity – particularly in hard times.
S: Finally, in showing our readers a picture of today, of your work or something else, what would that be?
R: No words, just a picture
