This will be rambling.
Last weekend, while I was waiting with Theresa just before her wedding ceremony, there was a moment where she mentioned that she was nervous – rightfully so since she was about to walk down the aisle. I let her know that hey, I was nervous also…
I hold a lot in my head on wedding days. I know other photographers have everything under control, they’ve done it a million times, and they’re totally, totally cool the entire day. While it’s not nearly as bad for me as it was during my very first wedding with Haley & Chris – I still aim to find and accept that nervous energy. Getting rid of being nervous doesn’t work for me and probably won’t happen – so I can either freak out and shut down, or let that nervous energy scatter my brain and free things up – because it’s like a punch in the head and often that’s the only way I can stop thinking and let go of the shots I *should* get – and just start making photos.
I mentioned this in our newsletter; We will be taking applications for the February-March-April Internship term between January 17th through the 21st (alright, one of my main goals this year is to actually write that thing and get it out every other week.) We’ll be taking fewer interns this time around than we have in the past since we’re taking on a few new projects, while at the same time we’re going to shift gears and go in a few directions that are less obvious. Talk about being vague.
I mentioned somewhere about how over the past four months we contracted or referred almost 10k in paid work to our current and Alumni Interns. Let’s be clear – just because you’re an intern for someone, it doesn’t mean that you’re starting from scratch and you have no skills – many of our interns have actually attended and/or graduated from formal art and photography programs – and some of our interns are current, working professional photographers in their own right.
Having said that – now that we have a full year ahead of us, the goal this year is to refer/contract out roughly 30k to our current and Alumni Interns. Obviously and honestly, not all of them are ready to photograph every gig that comes their way – but that’s where it helps that at this point we’ve had nearly 30 photographers as our intern – which provides a considerable pool of people to pull from and work with.
We jokingly call them the Intern Army – and this is the Intern Experience. Every three months the family grows.
This coming Tuesday evening on January 18th we’ll be one of the speakers at the next CRAVE chat – Interns 101.
From the event website:
What better way to start a new year than with an extra set of hands to help you grow your business? Learn how to find and attract the best and brightest young talent and develop a mutually beneficial relationship for you AND your intern in this intimate chat with those who know interns best – Hannah Huffines of Concentrics, Leah and Mark Tioxon of LeahAndMark.com and Jennifer Shields of Posh Tot Events. Urban Cannibals is providing snacks and drinks to sweeten the deal.
We think you should register and attend – Here!
Really – the core of our Internship is based on this:
This video is also shown during our Photography Business Marketing workshop that we hold every three months for our Interns.
More rambling.
I want all of our photos to be beautiful. Snapshots, professional gigs, pictures of friends… why wouldn’t you want the photos you take of your friends and family to be as beautiful as the ones you make for clients? Why should it be a switch that you turn on and off? Beautiful photos happen all the time, not just when we’re getting paid for them. Besides – you want to get away from thinking that you need a beautiful location, with beautiful people, doing interesting things in order to make photos that are blog worthy. Because you’re not always going to have all or any of those things – so you’d better know how to deliver no matter what.
It’s been snowing here in Atlanta since last Sunday evening – and we’re photo-shooting this afternoon with the Interns and a few models… we’ll see how that goes.
Hey. Have a great weekend.
Atlanta. Photographers. LeahAndMark. Snow. Day. Photos. Snowpocalypse. Internship. Interns. Photography.