Sean Tucker/Rockstar Games

Sean Tucker has been a photographer for 12 years. He began shooting as a side-gig back when he was a pastor in South Africa, but soon parted ways with the church to work with a camera full-time. “A normal day for me would include some combination of shooting on the streets for a few hours, writing scripts for videos on my YouTube channel, [and] perhaps filming or editing for the same,” he says.

Usually, the empty streets and shuttered storefronts sparked by the coronavirus pandemic would be perfect scenes for street photographers like Tucker — but how do you practice “street” when the streets are off-limits?


The answer is video games, and Tucker is one of a number of professional photographers turning to virtual words to keep their skills sharp. “As a photographer I like any game which puts me into a world,” he says, noting a particular fondness for games like Assassin’s Creed: Origins and Horizon: Zero Dawn. “I love those games, but I’m terrible at them because I end up just riding around and exploring and ignoring the missions.”

Tucker’s interests in photography and video games recently collided while he and some photographer pals traversed the boundless, virtual plains of cowboy-sim Red Dead Redemption 2. After the standard stint of tomfoolery that befits all online multiplayer games, they suddenly remembered that Red Dead provides you with an in-game camera. “We started taking shots of landscapes, and before long we were riding to Saint Denis to shoot street, like we would on any normal day,” Tucker explains. “I think this time is seeing us all find creative ways to interact and hang out online whilst in isolation, and this just ended up being a bit of fun to while away the time.”

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Another photographer who has recently started shooting street in Red Dead Redemption 2 is Ondřej Vachek, who says he has been practicing photography since he was about 16. “Mostly street photography, with a recent turn towards documentary work, photojournalism, and documentary wedding photography,” he says. “I haven’t photographed much since I left London, but I’m slowly getting back to it. Just when I was finally ready to get back out there with my camera the lockdown was declared, so Red Dead Redemption is a band-aid until I can get back into the world.”

Ondřej Vachek/Rockstar Games


Like Tucker, Vachek developed an interest in video games long before donning a camera strap. Both recall playing Doom with their brothers, and both recount a gradual shift towards narrative-driven games over the years. “I think the record for a game I’ve completed the most times in a row must have been Metal Gear Solid on the original PlayStation, which I played at least 50 times back in the day,” Vachek says. Although he continued to play video games, his interest remained firmly fixed to single-player stories from then on.

As a result, he was never attracted to the online aspect of Red Dead Redemption 2 until he was convinced to start the ‘Red Dead Poets Society’ alongside Tucker and another photographer, Jeffery Saddoris, after his country entered a state of lockdown. “We wander around, fish, ride horses, relax, and talk about everything photography,” Vachek says. “It’s kind of like a podcast but with a more interesting backdrop. The taking pictures part just evolved naturally thanks to the world being so well-designed and lived in.” The Red Dead Poets Society hosts its streams on Twitch, and whenever the viewer base begins to show steady signs of increasing, the photography discourse kicks in.

“I think most would still giggle at how silly that seems and say that it’s all fake, but for those who were there, roaming the pixelated plains together, they are still attached to memories of hours whiled away with friends in meaningful conversation and connection whilst we all wait out this global pandemic,” Tucker says. “The world may not be real, but the interaction was, and the photos represent that.”

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Tucker explains that this “virtual street photography” is “like shooting fish in a barrel,” though. “It’s easy pickings because all your subjects just stand and look at you, with no confrontation, and the light is constantly beautiful and changes in interesting ways every five minutes,” he says. “It’s much easier than the real thing. That said, it’s a great way for people to play around in a safe environment and work on simple things, like composing an image well.”


Vachek expands on this, noting that the in-game camera used in Red Dead Online doesn’t show off the game’s true potential. He prefers to use its official photo mode, which is exclusively available in single player. “This mode allows you to change the focal length, focus point, [and] angle of view, allowing you to get way more creative,” he says. “Those pictures I take in-game resemble my actual photography much more. It’s a nice practice in exposure, composition, and storytelling, which I believe could be very beneficial to beginning photographers too shy to jump straight into the real world.”

As a means of elaborating on this, Vachek explains how comparatively easy it can be to frame shots in video games with decent photo modes. In his eyes, no game enables you to move as fast and well as you would with a real camera in real life, so specific features need to be made available in order to capture a certain caliber of shot.

Sean Tucker/Rockstar Games

“Do you need a shot from ground level looking up, with the person in the background in focus and slightly underexposed so he’s just a silhouette?” he asks. “In real life, that’s something done in a second, but the game controls don’t make it possible. So just pause the game, turn photo mode on, and you’ve got time to do whatever you intend.”

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“It is a great way to practice, but also to keep entertained and to keep the photography itch happy,” Vachek continues. “I always feel the need to photograph and this is the next best thing. I’m sure I’m not alone in that regard.”

Tucker explains that although he was personally aware of this kind of photography before, he never delved into it too deeply until recently. Due to the continued spread of coronavirus, street photography has become a completely inaccessible artistic endeavour — although Tucker notes that not all camera-slingers are paying heed to government advice, refusing to stay indoors and claiming they are duty-bound to capture such a momentous and unprecedented moment in human history.

Tucker reckons this is something that should be left to accredited journalists working for reputable news outlets. “That’s a very small number of people,” he adds. “The rest of us should be staying home and doing our part to slow the spread of this virus to the most vulnerable in our society.” It’s worth mentioning that virtual worlds such as these are accessible to our most vulnerable, too, and online games across the board provide us with a means of connecting safely from home.

“I think that we live in an amazing time where this stuff is possible,” Tucker says, explaining why the endeavours of the Red Dead Poets Society are so significant in this cultural moment. “We have made worlds for people to hang out in, especially while trapped in isolation, creating community in a virtual world which gives us a flavour of the outdoors — which we are all sorely missing at the moment. Being able to photograph has been fun, because in the same way we post shots of our daily outings with friends, we can also post shots of hanging out online.”

Tucker says that he recently posted an Instagram story featuring images he had taken while streaming with Vachek and Saddoris, and it quickly became his post with the most engagement. “To my surprise I had loads of other fellow photographers coming out of the woodwork saying how they were doing the same, and sharing their images with me,” he says.

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Ondřej Vachek/Rockstar Games

“Since then we have started to stream our little ‘virtual photo missions’ via Twitch,” Tucker continues. “Even that has seen people coming through just to hang out and watch us exploring the world, taking photos, talking about life, and, yes, occasionally chucking the odd stick of dynamite to keep things spicy.”

“The thing with playing with other people is that 90 per cent of the time there’s something going wrong,” Vachek says, citing connection issues, game crashes, and the possibility that one of his fellow players may get fed up and shoot him as potential problems. “There’s no escaping it and it doesn’t make the game any less fun, especially when you can carry out a 'funeral’ for one of your party members with them attending.”

“When you’re on your own, though, it is incredibly relaxing to just wander these gorgeously designed worlds, practice photography, and unwind since we can’t really go out,” he adds. “It’s the next best thing.”

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