Fourteen days at the coalface – Day Twelve
And so, to the final day of my internship at The Herald and Times, and an update that will be remarkable for one reason - I'm not able to tell you what I did today, as I was assisting on a closed shoot. Sorry! So, instead, today's update will consist of what I did very early this morning - which is actually an acceptable thing to blog about, as it was technically day twelve by the time I was taking photos. At any rate, last night kicked off with me, knackered, on my way to do some nightclub photos at around 11.30pm. Unfortunately, the nature of a Thursday evening in summer basically means that myself and the reporter had very little in the way of options for clubs to drop in on. As a result, we had a pleasant chat for a while about various stuff, and I headed back to my car, with a view to heading home for the evening.
Of course, nothing is ever that simple in the mind of James Porteous. Remembering that someone in the office had sent my good friend and work experience colleague, Franck Martin, out on a late-night job, I dropped him a line, and arranged to meet up with him at somewhere I'd already been that week, sans camera ... The job was a photo opportunity with the Transport Minister at the new M74 Completion Project, just over the Kingston Bridge, which already had someone covering the photo side of things. Nevertheless, I hooked up a high-viz and a hard hat, before making like the budding news-gatherer I am, and diving in to the photo opportunities. I shot a couple of set-ups with the minister, and then some general shots of the massive crane as it got ready to haul big bridge sections into place over the M8. With everyone strapped up to the nines in Scotch-Brite jackets, I opted out of the traditional flash-blasting, and hauled up the ISO for some ambient light work. I was actually very happy with what I shot, and filed a few images to go with the article. That said, none of them made it in, but Franck did get a front page splash on yesterday's Evening Times, so I'm chuffed for him.
So, how has my two weeks been? Well, I'll be honest - at times, it wasn't brilliant. There's a lot of boring, crossword-filled waiting around when you're on work experience, I don't like being sent out on jobs when I would be better learning from someone doing them properly, and doing the same task several times in a few days is really not very much fun, especially when it's pretty much un-skilled. However, the place is full of really helpful, passionate photographers, and even just being able to sit and talk crap to them about photography was good fun. When I did go out to shadow people, I felt I learned a lot, and I also felt that I'm much more comfortable with setting up photographs than I was at the start of last week. I've been able to get involved in work that would otherwise be out of my reach, allowing me to So all in, I think it was definitely worth doing, I really enjoyed myself, and I'm glad I did two weeks instead of one.
The final tally for what happened with what I produced, is roughly as follows:
- Images published in both The Herald and Evening Times
- Over thirty-five images published in print
- Four full-page style sections featuring only my images
- Two videos live on the Evening Times website
- One reporter embarrassed in print, by taking a photo of her learning to air-guitar
I'd like to thank all the photographers at The Herald and Times, all the people on the picture desk, all the reporters who I ended up stomping the streets of Glasgow with, and also the people who featured in my photographs these past weeks. It's been a long, hard fortnight (stop laughing, it has!), but I think it has helped my photography, and regardless of whether I've seemed pessimistic at times, it's made me realise that it's something I could definitely enjoy doing for a living. Without a semblance of a doubt.
July 31st, 2009 - 21:51
Mwah!