– Photos by Mark | Letter by +Debra
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Dear New Intern,
You are about to begin the 3 most awesome months of your life. No really. You are. When these 3 months are done, you will have evolved as a photographer, as a human, and you will be ready to conquer the photographic world. Well, closer to ready than you were yesterday.
Sounds to good to be true, right?
Here’s the catch. Ok, a few of them –
You have to work hard.
Like really, really hard. Not just sweating, back breaking hard from carrying light stands, and running in all directions to get the best shot with your new zoomable lense – yeah that means your feet are your zoom! – but also staying up all night editing photos, writing blogs, recruiting models, writing a gazillion emails, coordinating 10 peoples schedules, exploring ideas, finding locations, and figuring out logistics type of hard.
You may think you know what you are doing, heck maybe you do, but chances are, you will change the way you do things. That’s what creative photographers do. They change. Constant Change. Your work should always echo pieces of you and “your style” but you should never be putting out the same work at a different shoot. You should evolve, change, and grow a little bit more everyday.
While we are on the matter of “your style” – remember your style is your style. It is not Mark’s style, or Leah’s style, or one of the +’s style. It is up to you to develop your style and voice as a photographer. You weren’t selected to be an Intern because we thought you would make a great copycat. Imitation is flattery, but imitation is also death in a fast paced constantly changing, and heavily saturated industry like photography. Don’t be a copycat, be you.
We all want to get to know you. We want to see your original and creative work.
You will have to work hard to develop and evolve your style. You will have to give 1,000,000% to every shoot, every image, every day. This means: you will have to work ridiculously hard.
You will have to hustle.
It is your responsibility to set up shoots. Sure you will be invited to shoots occasionally, but really, the shoots will be your responsibility. Remember the million emails I mentioned earlier. Yup, that will be you hustling models, couples, friends, dogs, and even a plate of food to become subject matter to shoot. You learn more by doing more.
Be bold, and take chances, cultivate relationships, and have fun!
On behalf of the team here at LeahandMark.com and our dedicated readers, we welcome you!
Sincerely,
Alumni Intern +Debra
