So, as you already know, I have joined the Gerardy Team of Photographers. I was originally brought on as a Team Lead, but when people know your skill set, sometimes you have to wear many hats. As a San Diego Portrait Photographer in training, I like to spend my weekends doing some sort of shoot, just to stay active.
Last week I had the opportunity to wear many hats. Monday through Wednessday, I was an Instant ID printer. That entailed that I print ID cards for all students, which sounds easy, but not really. One of the issues is technology, when a student’s ID fails to print, you must reprint the students picture. Unfortunately due to an issue with the software you must go to the actual photographer and ask them for a reprint. Easy right, not when there are four or more cameras going at once and the student cannot remember, which camera he or she was at. Or the fact that the photographer has another student ready to photography, so you must wait a few seconds. Another items that’s real fun, is when the printer is so backed up that you have about 20 or 30 students waiting for cards and you must ask each student, for his or her name and which camera they were are, so you can ask the photographer for a reprint.
The second hat I wore was Team Lead. This entailed me getting up extra early, so that I could pick up the company van, verify the contents of it and drive to a remote school, like 40 miles away. Once you arrive, you must check all your staff in, find the setup location and start setting up your camera sets. You must coordinate with the school staff and verify paperwork, such as staff name and titles, student name on his or her cards. Once you go live classes need to be brought in to photograph, while other classes need to be coordinated to be next on the photography list. You also need to factor in for recess and lunches. Once all students are photographed, you must tear down, verify paperwork again, clock your staff out and return the van. Once at home base, the van must be unloaded, the backup connected to the network, student cards given to editing, along with the unused ones and paperwork placed in the appropriate folder. Then you get to clock out and go home. The nice this about being a team lead is that you are able to accumulate more hours.
Next hat that I got a chance to garb was a photographer. This would have been more fun; unfortunately the school had two different shoots going on, at the same time. The first one was group shots, which had staff members on risers in a group shot. The second shoot was for individual shots, for the yearbook. Normally this is fun; however the principle decided to have a staff meeting going on at pretty much the same time, so time was a major issue. Usually a photographer gets about 60 seconds to shoot per person, this was sped up to about 30 seconds per instructors. Which you can image was not fun, since we had to pose the person, do minor touch ups, such as hair and makeup, adjust lighting for glasses and capture 5 or 6 shots. I am hoping that I was able to meet their expectations
I hope I have not bored you too much. I had a lot of fun writing this one like all of my blogs. I trust I have given you some valuable tips to think about, before planning your next shoot. It’s not all bad, just be clear and informative, it will save you a lot of headaches. Remember nothing is set in stone and there is not a perfect formula, so go out and have some fun.
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