Street Photography Magazine

Change, Constraints and Creativity with Shlomi Amiga

Dec 18, 2020

57:05

Thanks to the Internet we now live in little silos of individual realities. The shared experiences we had before this phenomenon no longer exist. Then along comes the coronavirus pandemic that has thrust into a new shared experience not felt since the 911 attacks and the Kennedy assassination. It is a common reality we cannot escape.

No this isn’t another story about the pandemic but it is one example of how one very creative person has reacted to the changes the pandemic has forced upon his family, business and personal life.

This week I had an opportunity to sit down with Shlomi Amiga from Toronto Canada. He’s a commercial photographer, avid street photographer, husband and father of two young boys.

Once the lockdowns began Shlomi saw his wedding photography work, which was a key slice of his income, vanish over night.

He had been thinking about phasing out the wedding side of his business, but now the decision was made for him. The pandemic had accelerated the change he was already contemplating.

The extra time has given him the mental space to develop the studio-side of his business and find new avenues to be creative. For example Shlomi has applied his creativity to video by creating a new YouTube channel called Nerding out on Photography. In his first segment about street photography

To keep his creative juices flowing he began sharing his knowledge with other photographers worldwide through a new medium, video. He’s created a YouTube channel Nerving out on Photography that shares his vision and thinking about street photography composition. He uses a few examples of his own work to help the viewer create a mental picture of interesting visual elements to recognize in the street. He did a brilliant job of making an abstract concept real and memorable. This is no small feat.

I’ve embedded the video below this article for you to see for yourself.

Change is inevitable, and the pandemic has accelerated it many times. Sometimes sudden change works out to be a good thing. It requires us to make difficult decisions and take action that we would normally avoid. And maybe the constraints the we’ve had to endure over the past nine months will result in some new creative ventures that we wouldn’t otherwise have considered.