Fourteen days at the coalface – Day Four
Thursday saw me given my first job (other than a GV or vox pop) on my own.
I was tasked with shooting a young lad who's up for Best Junior at the British Hairdressing Business Awards, at a salon in Glasgow. Now, as I've mentioned through my time with the paper, I've been a bit nervy at this sort of thing, but I gave it a bash. In all honesty, I wasn't happy with what I shot - I got maybe two or three images that I was content with, but the concept of knocking together an image on the spot is still frustratingly out of my grasp. I like shooting things that are happening of their own accord, I'm also happy to set up a shot if it's something I know about, and understand. The staff photographers know how to make their images tell a story in these strange, fabricated situations. I don't, and not being able to do this is really, really fucking me off. But I guess that's a good thing, as I'm determined to get a grasp of it, by the balls preferably.
After my morning of vague frustration, I was punted out onto another GV - this time to shoot an old Tesco store on Argyle Street that's about to become Scotland's biggest TK Maxx. Difference with this one from my GV on my first day was that the shop itself was totally empty, gutted, and didn't even have the sign outside anymore. So, I shot the arse off the place, did what I'd been advised after my previous job and put a lot more emphasis on where the shop is in relation to the area around. It wasn't the most glamorous job, but I think I might be pretty handy on the old GV front now. Weirdly, at the uni paper, we strived never to use images of buildings where possible, but in the real world of the newspaper industry, it seems to be very common. Who knew...
Final job of the day was slightly different, as I had to help out on some product cut-out shots for the fashion pages of one of the papers (frequently, I don't really know who I'm taking these photos for, as the whole Herald/Sunday Herald/Evening Times thing is so joined up these days). This was fairly straight forward, and the natural light in the building was enough that all I needed to do was shoot various bits and bobs on a flat white background, so the magic lasso tool can be broken out to get the job done afterwards. This bottle was a little bit of a bastard, but it was alright in the end after I propped it up and used the paper to make a wee infiniti curve.
I am enjoying this week. I didn't know whether I would or not, but I'm finding it very useful to be able to follow around the pros, and see how they get the job done on such a varying range of subject matter. Hopefully my enthusiasm will continue until next Friday...