I chose to focus my photo essay on the activities that my family has been doing to pass time during the quarantine. From things that make us happy, to things that we simply need more time to complete, we have been trying to keep ourselves entertained over these past few weeks. During this strange time, many of us are trying to find things to keep us occupied. These are just some examples of things that we did while we are stuck at home. For some of these photos, such as the ones in action, it took many attempts to get the right shot. For other photos, it took hours to create. This was the case with the photo of my room which I took the time to completely re-arrange. Beside these types of photos, many of them were still shots of objects to represent the activities we have been doing. I chose to organize the photos in the order that we started the activities. The first photos represent activities that my family usually does without the quarantine. They are things that we enjoy and usually do anyway. As the photos go on, the photos begin to represent activities that we may not have done without all of this extra time. They are things that we rarely get to do during a normal week, but now, we are doing simply because we finally have the time to. For some of the in action pictures, I had specific visuals in mind that I wanted to capture for the photos. For some of the other photos, I was going between a few different ideas on how to represent the activity and eventually decided on the ones shown. Overall, This photo essay represents my family’s life during the past few weeks. From what we normally like to do in our free time to what we have finally had the time to do, we have been keeping ourselves busy with these activities.

(Image 1) My sister, Remi (13), serves the volleyball over the net to Henry (16), our neighbor, in our backyard. Volleyball is something that we all play together very often. This has become even more common now because of the free time we have. Remi explains “I started playing volleyball last year. I love it! I really like that we all get to practice all the time together because it is really fun.” We now play volleyball daily to keep ourselves active and to make sure we get outside.

(Image 2) My sister, Remi (13), uses her computer to play video games, watch videos, and overall just pass the time. This is something that Remi does normally, however, it is now taking up a larger part of her day when she has nothing else to do. She tells me “You should play with me! It is a fun way to pass the time when I’m not sure what else to do.” Remi likes how fast the time can fly by when on her computer. This is helpful during the quarantine as all we want to do sometimes is to just pass the time.

(Image 3) My sister, Remi (13), draws in her sketchbook at night. “I’ve always drawn. Now, I just actually have the time to take my time and enjoy it.” We are a very artistic family so we have all been taking time recently to draw, paint, and just try to be creative. It is usually difficult to do this during normal school days because we never have time. Now, we can take hours to focus on creating a piece of art. It is relaxing and enjoyable.

(Image 4) My vanity in my room is somewhere I have been spending time recently. Even though we have nowhere to go, I enjoy makeup a lot and I have been taking advantage of the time to do my makeup sometimes. It is not something I would normally do in a school week, but whenever I got the chance and had nothing else to do, I would. Now, of course, I have plenty of time and it is something I very much enjoy.

(Image 5) My sister, Remi (13), straightened her hair in our bathroom. This is something that surprised me. Remi rarely ever enjoys doing her hair. I was so happy to hear that she wanted to do this! I have always wanted to teach her how so I was excited when I got to help her with this. “I normally hate doing my hair. But, with nothing else to really do, I figured I would do it and I actually like how it turned out!” I was really happy that remi wanted to do this with me because this would almost never happen normally.

(Image 6) We decided to get lights for some rooms in our house. Because we are spending all of our time here, we wanted to make our rooms into spaces that we enjoyed more. These lights make us feel happier and lighten the mood as they are simply a nice detail in our rooms that make them feel more full.

(Image 7) This is my room. I had recently had mixed feelings about my room for multiple different reasons. I had been spending no time here. I decided months ago that I needed to redo my room so that I liked it again. Two weeks ago, I rearranged everything and got some new lights. This was a fresh start that I really needed. I am so happy that I did this. I never would have had the time to do this during a normal school week so this was definitely one of the positives of having so much free time.

(Image 8) We have done a lot of deep cleaning recently. This is a photo of my sister’s jewelry. She rarely wears jewelry so she had never really gone through what necklaces she had. She recently sorted through them and cleaned and reorganized it all. We have been doing the same thing with a lot of our things. Our closets, cabinets, clothing; we have been organizing everything. What would normally take us days to totally clean and reorganize now takes us only one day because we are able to work straight through the day.

(Image 9) This is my sister’s ukulele that she has found time to play recently. She is a very musical person. She was in her school musical and is in the orchestra. I haven’t heard her play her ukulele in months so it caught me by surprise when I finally heard it last week. It was a nice surprise and I am happy that she is spending time doing things that she loves but hasn’t had the time to enjoy.

(Image 10) My neighbor, Henry (16), does flips on the trampoline when he has time. This is an activity that in the past, we did all the time. More recently, we simply have not had time to go on the trampoline. We have not gone in months. Now, we do have time so we started to go out on the trampoline again. Henry tells me, “I almost forgot how fun this was. I never had the time before with school.” This is something we wouldn’t have done if we didn’t have all this time on our hands. I am happy that we get to do this now.