I followed the other stores and eateries in my area and closed my shop last week.

This Covid-19 has us all worried about getting close to other people and I wasn’t seeing any customers anyway. Adding to that both the provincial and national government health officials are telling us, especially those my age, to stay home.

So I have stayed home almost two weeks. I don’t mind being alone that much, and anyway my close friend and photo-partner has come up a couple times. Jo walks around my house to my back deck (She and her family have been staying home too.) and with our chairs distanced a bit over 6 feet we sit bundled up from the cold and share a bottle of red wine and talk about anything and everything.

I sat watching the TV this morning and there were lots of discussions about how the forced isolation would make everyone bored and lonely and there were also all sorts of advice and even advertising for things to do. I’ll say that I am not lonely or bored, and the only thing that I find boring is people telling me I should be.

I finished my coffee and went outside to look at the clear blue sky. There is still snow covering most of my frozen yard, but I didn’t think I’d need to worry about more snow and put my snow blower away.  Then I walked out to my car with my camera in my hand thinking about how it is for those of us with hobbies like photography. Oh, and “social distancing” wasn’t even on my mind as I drove down to the river to take some pictures.

I am sure most readers have discovered the easy joy of just walking around with their cameras with no purpose other than photographing anything that looks interesting.

I began with my little Nikon V1. Then as I waited for my car to warm up after the freezing -11 degree night I changed my mind and got my Nikon D7000 Infrared camera instead.

The blue morning sky would be perfect. And anyway, I thought it would be fun to manipulate the odd coloured images on my computer.

I walked around the yard-photographing things with the sun at my back. That angle of light makes for a stronger IR effect. I took some pictures of my house, wandered out on the street to take some pictures of the valley below and walked to the end of the road photographing anything that I thought might work as IR subjects. Then I got in my car and drove down to the river.

I could see a person walking their dog in the distance and there was a couple sitting in their car enjoying the view. I roamed the riverfront quite alone happily taking pictures till I got cold from the breeze blowing off the river.

I think most hobbies are time consuming and will easily ward off boredom and loneliness.

Photography… Well photography to me anyway, captures my mind and makes me think about the subjects I am photographing and the environment I am in at that moment.  Just the act of finding and photographing something is a mental reward in itself. And whether one plays with their images on the computer like I do, stores them on their computer, or posts the pictures on something like Facebook for others to enjoy, photography is the perfect stimulant for those of us hiding out from this pandemic.