This paper discusses the author’s experience of conducting an infant observation via video call during the pandemic. Using vignettes, the author explores how a screen-based format challenged traditional understanding of infant observation, necessitating a rethinking of technique and theory. The author argues that this was a productive disturbance, requiring useful reconsideration of the task and how we think about observation, perspective, participation and neutrality. This is held alongside the developing context of the pandemic, and how these extraordinary conditions – seen through the prism of the developing infant – sharpened psychoanalytic concerns of dependency, separateness, desire and loss. The author considers some of the ways the pandemic continues to have consequences in our world today, and how it might relate to our work. Some possible clinical implications regarding online sessions are formulated, as well as the psychoanalytic function of these technologies in the psyche.