Guest blog post time! Here is a post by ex student Steven Jones who studied Photography, Media and Film here from 2016-2018. and has now gone onto work as a photographer, both freelance and for the creative agency awesome.™. Steven impressed Dan Rose from awesome so much at the TRC final exhibition last year he left him a business card to get in touch, and the rest is history! Take it away Steven!
It seems like decades
ago since I last walked into TRC as a student, to hideaway in the darkroom
pouring coca cola onto my prints to get a cool effect. In fact, it’s only been about
a year now but I suppose you can do a lot in that time.
After leaving TRC in July 2018 I began
working as a freelancer, using my photography skills to try and get a grasp on
the real world industry. If not for Dan Rose (aka Drose/Lil Pump’s biggest fan)
I’d not have had a clue where to start as at this point I hadn’t even built up
the courage to open Adobe lightroom and learn how to edit RAW photos. Dan took
me under his wing at his company (awesome.™) and I began shadowing him on a
bunch of photoshoots, the first of which was at Barnsley College capturing
images for the new prospectus.
I learned rather
quickly that as a photographer in the real world you have to be pretty adaptive
and ready for anything, there really is no amount of planning which will
prepare you for when you walk through the door on the day of shooting.
After shadowing Dan for a few weeks I
began to take over some photography responsibilities within the company, mainly
taking care of Dan’s estate agent client, and conducting photoshoots of
properties around the South Yorkshire area. At first I’ll admit, taking
responsibility and going it alone was somewhat daunting after only a few weeks
ago being in a classroom still asking teachers if “this looks good”, but soon
enough with time my experience and confidence grew significantly helping me get
better at the job in hand.
At first, most new
photography jobs I had to do were intimidating as there’s a level of
expectation in which the client expects not only a product to be delivered but
a high quality one, and with photography at events and occasions such as
weddings you’ve essentially got to nail it the first time!
I’d say I was
prepared for most eventualities as I’d been using my camera in manual for years
so I should be good to go right? Well truthfully, it was being ‘creative’ when
put on the spot which got me the most. Some may argue that you can’t really
teach creativity however I think that my time at TRC did teach me to take my
time and explore ideas in various ways instead of opting for the first and
easiest option.
Hours in the darkroom
jamming to Enter Shikari and printing photos onto expensive paper had somewhat prepared
me for the moment I needed to capture a wedding ceremony. I realised I could
take my time and focus on getting those few great prints or in this case great
images which were smashing quality, rather than panic and fill my SD card with half
decent “pics” which more than likely would be disappointing to look back on
rather than exciting and special – like wedding shots should be!
Fast
forwarding to now, I’m working on developing skills which work hand in hand
with my photography like videography, graphic design and branding. This is
great for me as I also studied Film and Media at TRC where I learned about film
production and how a director works to create a video masterpiece, and I’ve now
had chance to have a crack myself and put my videography to the test. We’re
working on a new website here at awesome.™ and have created a video to show off
who we are and what goes on behind the scenes. Not only this, but in the past
month we started filming wedding videos, which is all the fun of regular
wedding photography but with added complications as I’m sure you can imagine!
All in all it’s been a pretty mad year
since leaving TRC, there’s plenty I’ve missed out but if you’ve made it this
far into this post I’m sure you’re already getting bored so ill wrap it up by
saying cheers to TRC and Dan from awesome.™!
Oh
I missed out that I had chance to go inside a Halifax bomber and take photos,
was pretty mad to be fair…
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