Individual Learning Journal - Year 3

The last year of Creative Media Practice 2012 has begun, and with it has come an added dimension of working for clients in group work. Based in Bristol at the Paintworks media complex, we have formed our own mini media production company called Artswork Media and have a number of group projects that we all will be working on this year. Here is a list of potential projects we will be working on this year:

• Wells Cathedral - Life of a Chorister
• Quartet Community Foundation - 25 year anniversary promotional video
• Templar Books - book trailers for upcoming series Arcadia Awakening and book Whisper
• Freq Out - Chicago based comedy show, collaboration with Columbia College
• Illuminate Bath Festival
• Bath Film Festival
• From Page to Screen Festival
• Bath Lit Festival
• Flying Blind - Behind the Scenes EPK
• Wherever the Need - marketing campaign for new project 'Sanitation First'

The projects I have decided I would most like to be involved in are Quartet Community Foundation, Wherever the Need, Templar Books and Illuminate Bath Festival. We first split into teams to research and meet clients for each project. I volunteered to be one of the main contacts, along with Chloe, for Quartet Community Foundation. We researched the company and then we met with Megan Witty, a PR woman working for Quartet that had first approached Artswork to make a short promotional video promoting the funding organisation's 25th anniversary of giving to charities in the West Country.

Our first client meeting went well, as we had found some points of connection in our research of the company - Chloe had recently done a similar project for a different charity and I had produced a behind-the-scenes documentary on a film festival combating human trafficking, Unchosen, the year before that I found out Quartet had sponsored. We found from the meeting that they wanted a short, two minute promo video explaining who they are and what they do, as well as still photos for their website and press releases.

After the meeting we met as a class and decided on roles for the project. I became the producer and main stills photographer for the project and we began to book in filming dates to go to the different charities they sponsor.

Our main client contact was someone who had just joined the organisation after recently graduating from Bristol University, and it soon became clear that this would not be a typical professional client relationship as we had expected. We began having problems when she asked if she could get a lift to where we were filming on our first filming day and then failed to show up or answer her phone on the day. We waited in the car for as long as we could, trying to phone her with no response, until we tried calling the offices to see if she was in. They got in contact with her and she finally called back about twenty minutes after we were meant to leave, saying that she had accidentally overslept and wouldn't be coming in with us after all. This was the first of several examples of the client acting in an unprofessional way.

This gave us a difficult situation, as we knew we needed to maintain a client relationship but were unsure how to deal with the unprofessional approach she was taking. Paul Clarkson, business consultant and guest speaker at university speaking on 'How to Deal with Clients', said one of the things needed when dealing with difficult clients is to first identify the problem and then be able to confront them without severing the client relationship. We were able to do this, being firm on the day about the fact that we would have been late for our first filming session if we had waited any longer for her without being able to get in contact, yet we were able to maintain the client relationship by doing this in as professional a way as possible. She came to the next filming date, where it was just myself and a cameraman as the crew, apologising and acting in a much more professional way with us, leaving happy with how we were going about the project and with the client relationship intact.

Another problem we encountered was on our first filming day, when we finally arrived at the destination only to be told that the session we were going to film of a gardening group of adults with special needs had been canceled at the last minute because of the weather. We were unsure of what to do, since we had driven for an hour with all the equipment to film just the one session. We decided with the charity to wait and see if the rain would stop long enough to allow us to film some cutaways of the garden that we could use along with footage of the gardening group rescheduled for a later date. During this time, we decided that in order to salvage the day and still do some filming, we could get interviews with the main woman in charge of the garden and a care worker who had come, also unaware that it had been canceled. It took some talking, but as the women got to know us they became more comfortable with the idea of being interviewed. The rain eventually stopped and the sun came out, so we were able to go into the garden and get two great interviews that we will be able to use in the final project, as well as cutaways of the gardening project. In this way we encountered a problem but were able to get around it by getting useful footage that we can use in the final project.

Bath Chronicle - The Last Day.

The last day of my placement, I went to take photographs of the interior of the Victoria Art Gallery, the Bath Abbey and the Roman Baths and Assembly Rooms. It was a great opportunity as I was able to take photos inside these places where photography was usually prohibited (Victoria Art Gallery) and get free, personal tours (Roman Baths). I spent the last day of my placement being shown the security guards’ favourite photo spots in the Roman Baths, and was shown many unusual places to take stunning photos of the baths that were only known by the guards.

Unfortunately, when they imported the photos onto the system, they must have deleted them off my camera so I can't show examples of the photos, but they were very happy with them and decided to use some in the next week's paper.

I then went in to give in the photos and officially finished my work placement! When I left, I gave them my contact information and they said that they would let me know if there is any freelance work that comes up in the future.

Summary:

Stage 1: Record

As can be seen from each of these blog posts, I experienced working as a photojournalist in a professional working environment for a publication that circulates to over 100,000 readers. I spent time in both the news desk department, researching, interviewing and writing articles, and the photography department, being sent out on assignment to get photographs. I observed the process of publishing a weekly city newspaper, from the first allocations of news stories to reporters to the final editing and the layout of the paper. I also observed how both reporters and photographer work professionally in this environment, learning much from the process.

Stage 2: Influencing Factors

The main factors I could see influencing me were in the areas of my style of writing and photography. I grew up in Jerusalem, Israel, where earth-shaking events would be happening every day that would make headlines around the world; this, in fact, is what made me want to do photojournalism. I also tend to gravitate towards reading world events and current affairs publications such as TIME magazine or NewsWeek. Both of these factors I think have influenced my style of writing, which I found was very different to the style of a local city newspaper such as the Bath Chronicle. This took time to readjust to fit their style of relating to their readers.

Stage 3: Reflect

I thoroughly enjoyed the whole of the placement and felt that it achieved its aims. In the Education (Work Experience) Act of 1973, the aims of work experience were outlined as fitting into ten different categories. One of these categories was titled ‘Sampling’, and defined the aim of it as being “To enable students to test their vocational preference before committing themselves to it” (Watts et al, 1989, cited in Wellington, 1992).

This work experience gave me that opportunity, enabling me to see which areas of photojournalism I would like to pursue as a career. It also gave me the chance to experience working in other areas that I found not as enjoyable, such as adapting to a much more 'small-town' style than what I was used to. I also found that writing stories about topics such as mouse racing and abandoned rabbits, the kind of pieces that make up much of a local newspaper, is not the area of journalism that I would like to pursue a career in.

Having experienced working for a local paper, I think now that I would ideally like to work for a publication that focuses more on world issues and events. I know that in order to do so, though, I would need to work my way up through local and national publications and am glad I had the opportunity to prepare myself for it through this work experience.

In hindsight, I can see now that I should have prepared much more for the placement by reading the Bath Chronicle regularly, to get used to the style of writing and to the style of the photographs they used. As I found that my style in both these areas is completely different to the style they use, it took time to adjust to their style and the brand identity of the newspaper which I could have saved by preparing for the placement beforehand.

Stage 4: Learn

Another category in The Education (Work Experience) Act, called ‘Preparatory’, defines its aim as being “to help students to acquire skills and knowledge related to a particular occupational area, which they will be able to apply if they wish to enter employment in that area” (Watts et al, 1989, cited in Wellington, 1992).

This has definitely been the case in my work experience, as although much of what I was doing was not what I would like to be doing ideally in the future, the experience taught me new skills and challenged me in many ways. It also stretched my abilities, giving me the skills needed to work in this area if required to do so in the future.

I learned the requirements and the expectations of working as a photojournalist in a professional office environment like the Bath Chronicle. I also learned that the most important thing in this industry is to meet the needs and fit the brand identity of the publication. I picked up many tips along the way for both writing articles and taking photos for a newspaper that I'm sure I will be able to apply to any job I have in photojournalism in the future.

I also learned through this that I need to improve my personal quality of learning to prepare beforehand. Instead of leaving it until I was actually on the placement to do more in-depth researching and more than just cursory reading of the paper, I should have intentionally prepared and gotten myself accustomed to the style and brand identity of the paper. I also learned that in order to get a staff job as a journalist on a news publication, it is essential to complete a journalism course after my degree and I will be looking more into this in the future.

Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed having my work experience at the Bath Chronicle. I learned many skills that I know I will use in the future and experienced what it would be like to work in a professional environment. I feel that it achieved its aims of preparing me for working in that occupation and gave me a taste of what it would be like to work as a professional photojournalist. I learned from this experience what Newton (2009) describes:

"Photojournalists distinguish their images from others in part by intention: the purpose of making and distributing the images is to show the truth, to the extent any human can discern and communicate, of stories significant to people's lives."



References:

Newton, Julianne H. (2009) 'PHOTOJOURNALISM', Journalism Practice, 3:2, 233 – 243

Wellington, Jerry (1992) 'Varying perspectives on work experience: 'there's nowt so queer as folk'',
Journal of Vocational Education & Training, 44: 2, 153 — 182

Bath Chronicle - Next to last day

On Thursday, it seemed much more relaxed back at the office as everyone could breathe again now that the paper was published for that week. I was asked to write some more articles, such as an article about an art exhibition being put on by the Bath Art Bizarre Group and a follow-up story on three Bath rugby fans who took on a challenge to canoe from one game to the next for charity.

After researching, phoning, interviewing and writing up the articles, I was then sent to another photo op, this time at the Royal Hospital for Rheumatic Disease. The Bath National Osteoporosis Society had raised money to buy the hospital four new state of the art mechanical beds which they were unveiling that day. I arrived about ten minutes before it started, spoke with the main organisers and took notes during the speeches. I then set up the shot of members of the society and members of hospital staff surrounding the bed with a commemorative cake in the forefront of the image, seen below.

At the end of the day, I was then asked if I could call the Head of Heritage Services on the Bath City Council to get permission to come in and take photographs of all the Bath Heritage sites the next day. The staff at the Chronicle needed to update their photo files to have current photos of all the heritage sites and asked if I could spend the day photographing them.

They had the number of one contact, Pat Dunlop, the Head of Heritage Services in the Bath Council. When I called and asked about coming to photograph the Roman Baths, Pump Rooms, Victoria Art Gallery, Royal Crescent No.1 and the Bath Abbey, she referred me to another woman named Maggie Bone. After speaking to her and explaining what we needed to do, she said she would let everyone know at the places under their jurisdiction (the Roman Baths, Pump Rooms and Victoria Art Gallery) that I would be coming the next day. For the other ones, however, she said that they have no authority to grant permission and I would need to speak to the other organisations.

This took some time and research, as I then had to search on the internet to find out which organisations had jurisdiction over the other sites. I found the main number for Bath Preservation Trust, the organisation that overlooks the museum at No. 1 Royal Crescent, and gave them a call. However, they seemed very hesitant and wanted to know why. They eventually came back with the answer no, we couldn't come in to photograph because of something vague they put down to copyright reasons. I told my mentor, Graham Holburn, about it and he said not to worry about it at all since they were the ones losing out on publicity.

I then found the office number for the Bath Abbey online and gave them a call. They were much more helpful and said to come in at any time to take photos the next day, which would be my last day working at the Bath Chronicle!

Bath Chronicle - Deadline Day, second week

The next day, I went to Walcot Chapel Gallery to take photos of the exhibition with the artists involved. I had set up the appointment the day before, calling the main organiser of the event and setting up a time to come when as many of the artists taking part could be there as possible. I set up the shot in one of the corners of the exhibition with artwork shown behind, seen below (published on page 6 of that week's paper):



I got any last details I needed for the story before being sent to another photo op, this time at the Royal Hospital for Rheumatic Disease. The Bath National Osteoporosis Society had raised money to buy the hospital four new state of the art mechanical beds which they were unveiling that day. I set up the shot of members of the society and members of hospital staff surrounding the bed with a commemorative cake in the forefront of the image.

After this, I was asked to go to Royal Victoria Park where the streets had been closed to parking for the day and get photos and quotes from anyone affected. The council had set up bicycle races to happen every Wednesday in May in the park and had closed it to all cars and parking on those days. There were a number of people that were annoyed at this, as there was no advance warning and the park is a popular place to park for many commuters. I walked around the whole of the park, taking photos of the entrances and signs of closure and scouting for people that looked like they could be unhappy with the decision. I was able to get quotes from a local police officer that said he hadn’t been notified of it, an elderly couple from Bristol who only come into Bath to bring their grandchild to the park on Wednesdays and a local taxi driver. They all asked to remain unnamed but expressed their irritation at the organisers of the event that proved to make a mundane story appear more interesting.

The quotes I got for the story and the photo were published on page 4 of that week's paper, seen below:


(The full article can be found here.)

I had to do all this in time to be back by the deadline on Wednesday afternoon. The paper is sent to the printers at the end of the day on Wednesday, to be printed overnight and hit the shelves by about 6:00 in the morning on a Thursday. This was good experience as it showed me what it is like to work to a deadline and make sure everything is done in time.

Bath Chronicle - Second Week

After the weekend, I started my second week at the Bath Chronicle back at the news desk. This week, I had a charity theme to the articles I was given: a charity country market day in Newton St Loe, a 600+mile cycle ride, again for charity, and a charity event to round off Colerne Rugby FC’s 25th year anniversary celebrations.

An example of one of these articles that was published in the paper and online is here, taken from Bath Chronicle's website:


Village's quarter of a century of country markets

There was family-friendly fun as two churches benefited from traditional spring fairs in and around Bath.

The Newton St Loe Country Market saw a sea of activity in the village and raised an estimated £6,000.

The event has been held annually for the past 25 years, with market stalls lining the streets of the village, selling items ranging from handicrafts and hand-made jewellery to photographs and greetings cards.

This year, the day featured a dog show, an art exhibition and competition, morris dancing and a live jazz band.

There was a miniature railway and stalls selling cakes, cream teas, meat and other food.

Joint organiser Celia Gay estimated around 450 people had attended the event, with the weather bringing out the crowds.

"It was the biggest, most successful day we've ever had," she said.

Several gardens were open to the public, creating what Mrs Gay called a "beautiful picturesque English scene".

Proceeds will go to Holy Trinity Church and the village hall.

Fellow organiser Wendy Simmons said: "I would like to pay tribute to all those who helped and to the generosity and forbearance of the people of the village. We owe a great debt of gratitude to the village."

Meanwhile, writer Bel Mooney opened the Friends of St Stephen's Church May Fair at Lansdown.

She donated signed books which sold well, alongside the cakes, raffle and tombola tickets, hot dogs and cream teas, nearly new books, clothes and bric-a-brac.

There was face-painting, races and games for children and the event raised about £1,000 for the group, which raises money to help maintain and improve the 19th-century church.

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I was much happier with the edit of this article, since there was a huge difference in how much they had changed to this one and how much they had changed the ones I had written the week before. The other ones were virtually unrecognisable; for this article, they only added in two sentences at the beginning and left the rest almost completely unchanged. Since I had learned from experience that the style of writing has to be according to their brand identity, I was able to change my style of writing to fit the newspaper's brand.

After researching, phoning contacts and writing up the articles, I was then asked to set up a photo op of an art exhibition called ‘Fusion’ happening the next day. I also wrote the article about the exhibition after speaking to the main organiser over the phone, seen below:

Website Art Group's Display

A group of artists who met through a creative networking website are staging an exhibition in Bath this week.

The event at the Walcot Chapel Gallery in Walcot Street is a direct spin-off of a site created by Fringe Arts Bath, an annual visual arts festival which runs hand in hand with the Bath Fringe.

Artist Jane Horton has organised the exhibition along with three other artists.

Although they all work using different media, Mrs Horton says that this is part of the appeal.

She said: "We wanted this exhibition to appeal to a wide range of people. That's why we decided to go through the networking site to join together."

The other artists taking part are Stanislav Mitura, Vikki Yeates and Mary Rouncefield.

The gallery is showing the exhibition, called Fusion, from 10am until 6pm tomorrow and until 7pm on Saturday.

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I was much happier with the edit of these article, since there was a huge difference in how much they had changed to these ones and how much they had changed the ones I had written the week before. The other ones were virtually unrecognisable; for the first article shown here, they only added in two sentences at the beginning and left the rest almost completely unchanged. Since I had learned from experience that the style of writing has to be according to their brand identity, I was able to change my style of writing to fit the newspaper's brand.

Work Experience - Day 4 (Royal Wedding Street Parties photography assignment)

On Friday, the day of the Royal Wedding, I was sent out on my own to photograph some of the street parties that were happening around the city. The first location I was assigned to photograph was Bridgemead Nursing Home, where they were holding a party from 12 – 4pm to celebrate the wedding. However, seeing as most of the residents were over 80 years old, by the time I got there in the early afternoon they had gotten so fatigued from the excitement that they had all gone to bed! Fortunately, five residents had just woken up when I arrived so I was able to set up a shot with them standing next to a wedding dress and photo display made for the occasion, seen below. This photo was published in the newspaper in the section titled 'How Bath Celebrated the Royal Wedding' on page 45.


The second street party I was sent to was one in Sydney Buildings, where they had closed off the street and decorated it with layer upon layer of bunting, balloons and wedding and union jack paraphernalia. I had to weave my way around the residents dressed in their finest wedding clothes to try to find the main organisers and explain who I was to get permission to take photos. I then scouted out the people dressed most conspicuously in wedding finery and asked a group of them to pose together, along with a dog that was also dressed for the occasion. I found out later that someone had come in to the office to ask if he could buy the photograph after seeing it in that week’s paper, seen below:

I enjoyed this day since it was the first one where I was sent out on assignment on my own. I found having to walk into a party or an establishment and explain who I was boosted my confidence, getting easier each time. I also had to walk up to complete strangers, explain who I was and ask them to pose for the camera, setting up the composition and formation of the group to best show the event. This was challenging at first, but again became easier the more I did it.

In retrospect, I think I probably should have invested in better camera equipment before going out as a representative of the Chronicle. I was using my own DSLR, lens and hotshoe flash which are all good quality, but had a homemade diffuser taped on made from packing material which did the job but didn't look the most professional or what you would expect a photographer from the city's largest newspaper to have. One person commented on this and made me realise that, although I did look before the placement to try to find a diffuser to fit and couldn't, perhaps I should have invested in a higher-quality flash that would have come with its own professional diffuser. I've learned from this that equipment and accessories such as a large camera bag are essential, as I had to improvise to find a way to carry all my equipment.

Bath Chronicle - Day Three (photography)

The third day I was sent out on assignment with one of the main photographers for the day. As this was the day before the Royal Wedding, the day was packed with appointments of various primary schools and nurseries having street parties and competitions. We had 13 different photo ops to get to and spent most of the day driving to the different locations and trying to organise children in their wedding costumes to try and get them all into one shot.

I learned a few tips along the way, such as the fact that local newspapers generally want “strong, tight compositions with bright smiles” according to photographer Lloyd Ellington. He also told me some tips about writing the captions for the photographs, saying the main elements you need to get across are ‘who, what, where and why’. The main thing needed, he explained, is to be able to capture a photograph that tells the entire story in one image to draw the readers in. In the words of photojournalist Mark Hancock (1996), “an image has no age, language or intelligence limits."

He also said that a photo has to be able to tell the story on its own as much as possible. This echoes research in photojournalism that indicates that "pictures that explain elements of the text improve both comprehension and recall, while pictures that simply adorn the text do not improve comprehension or recall, and may even diminish them" (Garry et al., 2007, p. 996)

Here are some examples of some of the photos I took out on assignment:

This last photo was unplanned; we happened to see a house completely done up with union jack flags, streamers, bunting and even a union jack welcome mat so we decided to improvise. We went up to the house and knocked on the door, and luckily the owner of the house was happy to come out, also decked out in his England gear (including a union jack inflatable hat), and pose for some photos. This was a great opportunity since it showed that as a photographer, you can't just stick by the schedule but have to be ready to catch any opportunity that presents itself to you.

I thoroughly enjoyed this day, since it consisted a lot more of getting out and about, meeting new people and seeing more of the city. I found that even though this day should have been more tiring than the ones I spent sitting at the news desk talking on the phone or typing on the computer, I felt much more energetic and less drained at the end of the day. In this respect I preferred working in the photography department to the writing department, though I found challenges in both.

One of the challenges I found in doing the photography was that they generally wanted set up, posed shots with tight compositions and big grins. As my interest in photography is more in capturing what photojournalist Mark Hancock calls “the verb” or action moments of a story, this stretched my abilities as a photographer to learn to set up these compositions in a way that would fit with the brand identity of the newspaper; again, fitting with their style rather than my own. This is an important quality to learn working commercially for a publication, as from what I've seen, the most important thing is to fit to the publication's style and brand identity.

References:

Garry, Maryanne , Strange, Deryn , Bernstein, Daniel M. and Kinzett, Toni (2007) Photographs Can Distort Memory for the News. Applied Cognitive Psychology 21, pp. 995-1004.

Hancock, Mark M. (1996) What Is a Photojournalist? — http://markhancock.blogspot.com/1996/01/what-is-photojournalist.html accessed 8 May 2011