Every spring, seniors at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill put on their Carolina blue caps and gowns, and pose for photographs in front of the Old Well, the university seal, and other iconic locations across campus. This wasn’t possible for many soon-to-be graduates in Spring 2020, since many students had returned home when classes switched to remote instruction, and most of campus closed because of the COVID-19 global pandemic. To ensure we could still capture high quality photos of our seniors that celebrated this momentous occasion in their lives, photographer Johnny Andrews developed a plan to remotely take graduates’ photographs at their homes. He utilized technology of the times, Zoom, and technology of the past—a modified vintage Polaroid 195 camera—to capture the graduates’ personality in their Carolina blue graduation robes.
