Semester work

Here are some of the photographs we had taken as I was doing my internship with Scott Brown over the course of the semester.

Internship Questions

what is your education background? did you go to school for photography?

BA in Photography, Yes, Virginia Intermont College


is it necessary to go to school for photography if you plan on pursuing a career in it?
No, But it is necessary to get a bachelors in some discipline because most companies require a college degree to get a job.


what is your favorite part about being a professional photographer?

It's a different job each day. New people, new projects, new challenges.


what are the negative aspects of this profession?

Every job you do no matter if you have worked for them client 100 times is like the first day.

what is the most important part about dealing with a client? high quality photos?
fast turn-around time?
The ones listed are such a small part of the job. The bigger ones are how the client feel that you are doing the very best you can for them. Also that there job is the most important project you have in front of you. Also that you are going to make them look good to their boss.


if there was one thing you wanted me to attain from this internship, what is it?

Think through the big picture of the project. Not just your part. How it fits in with others and what you can bring to the table to help make project achieve more that what the goal was.


what is the best peice of advice you can give a student, like myself, going into the
photography profession?
Pick a goal and work toward that goal. Except nothing less than what you want. Once you hit that goal raise the bar again and keep going for more.


what is the most effective first step to establish your photography business?

Small steps and take advantage of every opportunity. The ones that don't see to have a big reward sometime end up with the biggest rewards of all.

More cleaning

Today was nothing out of the norm, it was really slow around the studio so I wound up doing the typical routine, finding work to keep me busy. I went through the storage room and tried to clean up and re-organize a little bit, I also spent a good amount of time sweeping and vacuuming. Its not exciting work, but anytime you can keep the studio clean, its for the best. The cleaner the studio is, the easier we can function, so I never feel sore about having to pick up a broom or dusting. Although I would rather take some photos, its not always going to happen. Besides that, I was planning on taking out a camera, short lens, and some polarizing filters so I can do some copystand photos for my brother. Shouldn't take too long, but anytime you can set up stuff like that, just gives you a little more practice, I can probably barter with him a little bit too, because he really needs to get it done.

Total Hours: 8

Sorry for the delay

I haven't had a whole lot of time with work and all kinds of other miscellaneous projects coming up. School has been pretty hectic lately, so I apologize for slacking on the internship posts. The majority of the work has been with a wide range of clients. We've shot with Circuit City for a bunch of product shots, typically one shoot a week, ranging anywhere from 4-6 hours in shoot time. We also photographed the U of R Spiders football team, the photo was to be used for their posters for the upcoming season. Over the past week alone, I worked a total of 22 hours, it was kind of a slow week, but I spent a lot of time with spring cleaning: reorganizing closet space, cleaning cameras and lenses, painting cyc walls. You know, all the fun stuff.

This next week is supposed to be really slow as well, but I planned on coming in and shoot some copystand photos, possibly some books, print work and a few other things for portfolio. Besides that, I do have a few events coming up that I planned on photographing, including lacrosse, and a Nascar event where I'm shooting for Associated Press. I'm not sure if I would consider that internship, but it was directly related to it, as Scott referred me to get the job, so yes, more or less. I should have some more postings soon, just to make sure I keep up with all the goings on before the end of the semester.

Just for the record, I did work at least one 8 hour day a week (Wednesdays were the designated day for me to come in). Besides that, the typical blog posts on here are for documentation of special occasions that were off the norm, and different things I've learned while going through the duration of this internship.

Most important thing I've learned recently, make sure you have good communication with co-workers, it can lead to more bullshit than you need to worry about.

CAA tournament

So yesterday we started to set up for our long weekend at the Richmond Coliseum shooting the CAA basketball tournament. We didn't do a whole lot yesterday, it was primarily setting up strobes, which is pretty typical in a days work, but it was just a lot more steps than usual. The Coliseum is a little bigger, so it was a workout getting all that equipment up that many steps. Obviously, we handled it, but it should be pretty interesting to see how everything turns out. We only spend 2 hours there yesterday, which is short compared to the countless hours we'll spend there over the weekend. Tomorrow, i'm assuming we'll be there somewhere from 10-12 hours. I show up at the studio at 8:30, the games start at noon, should be a long day. I'm pretty excited about it though.

Total tournament hours: 62

VCU vs ODU

2:00-10:30

VCU on ESPN2

Just thought I'd take a few minutes to recollect my experience yesterday at the basketball when VCU played on ESPN2 against Old Dominion. Overall, it was a great experience, just not the outcome i was looking for at the end of the game, we were up, but maybe some crucial mistakes in the end, we wound up losing in a heartbreaker. Anytime you play on tv like that, there are always big crews, which means you have to work around everyone else. We showed up at the studio at 2 and didn't get out of Siegel Center until 11:00, it was a late night, not a bad day of work though, we did really well on the setup and breaking down lsat night. We only had minor problems with the equipment, we just got back the Mark IIIs (canon) recently, and they've been acting up again, just something different this time. We kept getting a "error 99" message, the camera just had to be turned off and back on, but its inconvenient when it happens to your remote cameras, you have to track them down, screw around a bit, not very reliable. Besides that, everything else worked out nicely. We also experimented with a new pocket wizard configuration, originally we thought it would take less pocket wizards, but it doesn't. There is an advantage to it though, we are able to trigger multiple cameras just by shooting with our hand-held, so we can get multiple angles from one shot, it works out nicely, we just have to compensate for the shutter lag between the different cameras, whenever we get that figured out, everything should be great. Wish I had more to discuss but thats about all that was new for the shoot last night, we have another game on wednesday so we should be fine. I'm looking forward to the CAA tournament thats coming up in March, should be exciting and also bring in some good money, which I could really use at this point.