Ah my time has come for the classic job shadow project! I took part in this a few weeks ago. When I was first assigned a job shadow I instantly thought of what I wanted to do. Job shadow a photographer! This is a job I think about often for my future, but never know if I actually want to pursue it. This comes from fear of doing a job that isn’t a basic job like a doctor, teacher, engineer, etc. Being a photographer often comes along with running mostly everything yourself which is the opposite normal jobs, where you have people working for you or you’re working for people.So, I contacted Sherri Koop! Sherri is a Portrait Photographer who gets hired to take pictures of families, events, and individual headshots. I have always wanted to see what a day in the life as a photographer is, so I was really excited to do this. Here is some of her work.

I personally love taking photos of people, so Sherri has always been a strong inspiration for me and my photography. Sherri has taken many photos of my family and I though out the years and I have always wondered how she gets amazing photos every time, so I knew I had to do her for the job shadow.

THE DAY!

After contacting and talking with Sherri, she let me know we were doing a shoot with the lovely ladies and gentlemen that work with Selema Noon! I was excited but nervous as we all know I get scared of talking to new people, but it was all good once we were there. Sherri took photos from 9:30-12:00, and I had the job of holding the reflector. A lot of the time using a reflector isn’t necessary if the lighting is good, but this day the sun was out so I was basically a sun blocker! It felt nice having a small job to do, and it also meant I was standing basically in the photo hearing everything Sherri was directing people to do, and seeing how she does her job.

I genuinely enjoyed every minute of it and tried to soak up as information as I could!

WHAT DID I LEARN?

I was really interested prior to the shoot on how Sherri directs the people in the photos. Every. Single. Photo. That Ive seen of Sherri’s, the people look beautiful. No matter age, hair color, clothing they are wearing, or gender, everyone looks amazing in her pictures. This is really important as people are paying her for photos, and they should like how they look in them. So, I payed attention to the details. I noticed that things like the slightest lean forward, or opening of the eyes makes or breaks a photo. Small things like that are so important!

A big thing that Sherri taught me is that photography isn’t just about charging a cost for the photo, its also for the time connected to taking and editing it, and what they are going to use the photos for. There is so much stuff behind the cost and usages of photos, it blew my mind. I never thought about this as you just assume costs are for someone actually taking the photo, but that’s only one part of it.

I also payed attention to how long and how she got through such a large group of people. I thought taking a good photo of one person would take a while, but she had a strategic way of getting through over like 10 people in under 3 hours! Amazing.

SHERRIS POV

I asked Sherri some questions about being a photographer, and here are her answers.

Q: What classes/schools/programs did you take that helped you get where you are now? 

A: This is not a simple answer! My interest in photography began in elementary school and then kick-started when I took a photography class in high school.  From there, my post secondary education took me in the direction of music.  Once I landed my first “real job” I started night classes to become an accountant, thinking this would provide me with the most stable future.  Fast forward many years, I was working in senior management in telecommunications and enrolled in the Langara Professional Imaging Program, taking night classes to feed my need for something creative.  I worked on the weekends to build my portfolio while exploring the idea of leaving my day job.  When I decided to leave the corporate world, I applied for and received a small business government grant.  This grant gave me 9 months to write and deliver a comprehensive business plan.  The culmination of all these things helped me launch my business and ultimately get me to where I am today.  The moral of the story is, work hard and move in the direction of doing something that fuels your passion.

Q: What’s the best part about your job?

A: The best part of my job is that I am doing something I love to do.  This is extremely fulfilling.  I have also met and photographed some incredible people along the way.  Human connection is what inspires me more than anything else and human connection is also necessary for a good portrait, so I consider myself very fortunate to be doing what I do.

Q: What’s the worst part about your job?

A: What I like least about my job is having to do the tasks necessary in order to run a successful business.  This includes things like bookkeeping, taxes, writing quotes and contracts, organizing files, editing, and marketing.  I am happiest when I am out in the field doing what I love – making photographs.  I could do without the rest, although without the rest, I wouldn’t have a business.

Q: What’s the typical schedule/work hours for your job?

A: As a freelancer, there is no typical schedule/work hours which is both a blessing and a curse.  I love the flexibility and freedom although at times I do wish I had a more structured and predictable work schedule

Q: What inspired you to become a photographer?

A: One of my instructors at Langara really inspired me to create meaningful work which ultimately ignited a passion in me to become a full-time freelancer.  I also realized after many years in the corporate world, that I wanted a career that was more personally fulfilling.

MOVING ON…

Sherri gave me an amazing experience this day, and I am so grateful for it. This really helped me clarify or replace my assumptions having to do with portrait photography, and showed me its even more amazing than I thought. This whole blog post is a big reflection on this day, and I’m happy it was an assignment because I most likely wouldn’t have had this experience without it. I loved this project and I wish I could thank Sherri 100 more times! Thank you Sherri!!!!!!

Did you know you can deny to work if you feel unsafe or not properly trained? I didn’t know that until in Maker 10 we started discussing WorkSafeBC! WorkSafeBC teaches students and workers how to say safe and educated. Luckily I am being taught this all before I go into the workforce, but some kids weren’t as lucky. We watched a short documentary based off 3 kids that were brutally injured. These injuries were easily preventable through proper training, but they weren’t given that and that’s why WorkSafeBC is looking out for us! If you want to take a look at the video, here it is. (Beware its very gory)

THE HAZARDS!

As a class we each were assigned with a topic surrounding around injuries that can occur in the workplace. We made small keynotes and took notes on them, Let me explain some of them off what I learnt in the presentations! 

 BIOLOGICAL HAZARDS. The grossest one out of them all. This includes HIV and AIDS and can be transferred through multiple things like needles left on site, drinks or food eaten by a stranger, etc. This hazard is pretty simple and just explains, don’t touch other peoples gross things. 

MSI. This is the most frequent and common injury in BC. This includes things like tendinitis, strains, back pain, carpal tunnel, etc. Most of these are treatable, yet they are very annoying and can cause loss of workers for small amounts of time. 

SUN HEAT AND COLD.  This is the area I focused on in my presentation and it’s mainly about the employers needed to educate their workers on proper clothing and important things have to do with weather. Sun can cause to extremes amount of stress, skin cancer, burns etc. Cold can cause hypothermia which can damage your body, specifically toes, nose, fingers, etc.

NOISE HAZARDS. Hearing is something that you can’t tell most of the time is affecting you until long term damage. One out of four people are affected by their hearing quality lowering because of loud noises coming from construction, kitchens, traffic, loud music, etc. This is definitely something to watch out for.

CHEMICAL HAZARDS. This is a super scary one to me as my dad is a painter in the film industry and I’m always worried about the toxic stuff he is inhaling. Beside things like paint there is dust and asbestos and they can all cause lung cancer and breathing problems. 

This unit is extremely important as safety is a thing you shouldn’t ever avoid. As teenagers we sometimes feel pressured to do stuff as we are younger and just want jobs. That’s why this unit is educational as it teaches us we HAVE a voice and that even if it’s scary we still need to use it. STAY SAFE!

Hi I’m Luca and I have no idea who I am and what I want to do when I’m older! That’s okay though. Not an excuse to not wonder though! My class and I in maker (planning 10 included) have been using my blue print to start a conversation with ourselves on who we are and who we want to be. This made me thinking about the future as well as breaking down the way I think and work now. Self awareness is a main part of what I took out of this all and ill explain later in the blog. So, before I get into what I want to be when I’m older, let’s take a look at a keynote I made about who I am currently.

A part of my blueprint is focusing on NOW. In the keynote I talk about the quizzes I took to figure out what learner I am and It really opened my mind to how my brain works!!  This chart here is a chart of the classes I’m taking now, and what I want to take in the future high school years. The chart got me all excited for what I’m going to be learning about in the future, and made a good visual for my brain to picture. 

THE FUTURE

Using blueprint past the tests I talk about in the keynote, it suggests some jobs and universities for you! While I may not agree with some choices they give me like funeral planner or actor….. The website gives me some good ideas. Lets take a look at a chart I made that shows some of the jobs I saw/was suggested by my blueprint. 

I think out of all the jobs I saw on my blue print that I was interested in was film/business related. While those are drastically different, I’m making sure to pay attention to how those grabbed my attention.

SELF AWARENESS!

So, I’m going to discuss some stuff with this prompts! How do self-awareness and knowledge of skills, talents, and challenges contribute to career-life choices? Personally for the future I think equally about my happiness, money, and work consistency. It’s rare to find a job that includes all of those, but I might as well try. I feel knowing myself and being self aware will strongly influence my future as I know what I want and don’t want. I’m a creative person, yet am not afraid to go into something like business. I am trying to keep my mind open and not stick to one thing because hey, maybe that will lead me to my future amazing job! 

Overall, my blueprint made me think about something I often hide from thinking about, as the future can be quite scary. I think The Who am I keynote was my favorite part of this work as It really opened my eyes to who I think I am, which surprisingly I don’t think about that often! 

Let me explain the title… My class and I was assigned to plan out, film, and edit a Live Event. The point of this assignment was to have to plan and then work with the clips you have when editing, for an event you have no control over. I had never done anything like this, so I was excited to tackle the challenge. 

I immediately ran into a problem… I had no live event to film. Then I realized Ms. Willemse said we were allowed to make our own! Maggie, Isy, Adlih, Melika and I decided to make a cooking show. Our goals were to have the event as little unplanned as possible so it was as close to an Live Event, and less as a thing we planned. We first decided our rules for the PLP Pancake Competition. 

I then made an action plan for what photos and videos I needed to take. 

Then we filmed at Maggie’s house after school. It was a very busy and stressful 2 hours as I needed to cook for Isabelle and  Maggies video, and then had to film them cook for my own video. There was a huuuuuuuuge mess at the end of filming. (Sorry Maggie’s kitchen.) We paid attention to detail to things like lighting, audio quality and overall mood of video, while still keeping it real like a Live Event.

Now, the hardest part of this all. Taking my 45 minutes of footage of interviews, cooking, judging etc and turning it to a 2 minute video! Luckily, I had everything I needed thanks to my action plan but it was still hard. I really struggled with cutting down the clips, but I did it. I made three different drafts, and I would show them to you but that would be a waste of time as the only thing I changed between all of them was things like one video glitch, or changing the time of a photo being shown. 

Here is my final video.

I am overall quite happy with it. I think it shows the real ness of the event while still being funny and entertaining. I learnt from this that the planning before hand is really, really important. Without that action plan I would have been lost when filming!

Compared to the other videos I have made in maker like the Choice Recreation Video, is that they are challenging in different areas. The recreation one was challenging in the filming part (paying attention to detail, acting exactly like the actors, etc…) And the Live Event was challenging in the editing, as I had no video to reference on how I should make a 2 minute video including the interviews, cooking, and judging!