A Day in the Life with Nicola Goode

By Pauline Rogers

June 5, 2020

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Local 600 Unit Still Photographer Nicola Goode, SMPSP, who lives with her 16-year-old son, Dylan, in a hilltop house near the Santa Monica Airport, and maintains a storefront studio near Venice Beach, says the early days of the lockdown, in mid-March, were unsettling – in an area usually buzzing with noise and activity, the silence was deafening.

“Who could have imagined this is how a global pandemic would look?” Goode wonders. “I had never experienced my neighborhood so strangely peaceful. During those first weeks of quarantine, the sky was empty of airplanes yet full of rainbows and spectacular clouds. It felt like a private performance, accompanied by the flocks of green parrots careening over the rooftops.”

We asked Goode to provide some thoughts about the images – past and present – that have accompanied her journey through these strange and unsettling times.

Here’s what she said:

“In the past, when we had time between my jobs and Dylan’s school schedule, we’d travel, so being homebound has been challenging. Never a lack of projects in our house...quarantine has inspired Dylan to find a ‘79 moped on Craigslist that he’s been rebuilding from the ground up.”

“Zoom ballet classes, daily bike rides, walks to the beach, and drives up the coast have helped me maintain some equilibrium. I’ll look at the natural world thriving despite the raging virus and then head indoors to make masks for the Costumer’s Guild donation project.”

During lockdown, Goode has been revisiting her street photography – the genre that led her to pursue a career as a unit still photographer. “I approach the film set like a street photographer,” she says, “and I find cinematic moments on the streets of L.A. or when I’m traveling,” as with this image from Havana, Cuba taken with her Hasselblad XPan.

Goode has also been using the Blurb app to make mini photo books. “I’ve been combing through work I shot a few summers ago on a road trip through Uganda and Rwanda. I’m absorbed with finding those decisive moments – the short segments and stills that tell a story.”

While being a unit stills photographer gives her a sense of independence, Goode is still part of a team (like the still above from a Spike Lee short film for the Cadillac Escalade). “I miss working on set in close quarters with other creatives, and, of course, I miss the paycheck,” she concludes. “I’d welcome the opportunity to focus on ‘the circle of confusion’ through the lens rather than physical and fiscal health, and having to navigate this new normal – the six-foot circle of safe and social distance.”