Work Experience Photography – My Week with Ella

By 10th February 2018Studio Chit Chat

For the past week I have had Ella Dacres here at the studio on work experience. She has been enthusiastic, hard working and a joy to have around.

A Full Experience

We always do our best to give the work experience students that visit us a flavour of every aspect of this job. showing them everything from the admin to the sales and then editing and post-production. The highlight though for each of our young visitors has always been the photography itself.

In the past our visitors have brought a model in and had free rein of the studio for an afternoon.  I know they have loved doing this and learnt a lot, but it has not been a true reflection of what we do here at PhotoBaby.So this time I drummed up a few clients for Ella that were happy for her to help me with the shoot and see first hand how we do things. All the babies I invited in were smiley six month olds or there abouts. Little ones that can’t go anywhere but with any luck find every silly noise and song quite amusing. This didn’t completely go to plan, but we were close enough!

Leaning Techniques

Ella learnt a series of posing techniques, camera focusing tips and we worked on her own positioning and bracing of the camera. Watching her work in the beginning – I realised why I needed so much physiotherapy when I first started working! Camera’s are heavy and if you are holding them all day long, you need to do it right. This was the first thing we perfected.Ella was warm and chatty with our clients and playful with the little ones, just like she had been doing this job for years. This is what we are looking for in our work experience guests.

work experience photo shootEditing

Once portraits were made, we taught Ella how to edit them down. To make them into a manageable collection and file them ready for viewing. We make around three hundred photos in each photo shoot, but that is far too many to show, we find sixty is a good number to give you plenty of choice so they have to be really whittled down.

Then Ella prepared viewing slide shows. We have some great software for our viewings that can give you a real wow factor experience. Ella carefully picked out key images from each collection to make stunning welcoming montages for each of our families. And got a chance to run a couple of viewings as well.

Work Experience

One of our previous clients was kind enough to come for her sitting and viewing in the same day giving Ella a clear view of the work flow from conception to order. I hope this showed Ella that the photography is just a fraction of what we do at the studio and that all the other elements are equally important.

portrait made on Work experience

Photo Shop Skills

We photoshop all of bought work to give it a professional finish. Ella got stuck in to learning how to photoshop chosen images to perfect them. Photoshop is a fine balancing act, we pride ourselves on taking away the distractions without making the portrait look fake. Achieving this takes a sensitive touch and Ella did very well. We managed to get a few portraits finished in time for her to be able to post them onto our Facebook page too.

All too quickly, the week was over. We barely scratched the surface of all the techniques we use to run a successful photography studio. But I hope we gave Ella a good enough glimpse and showed her that she can make a future doing what she loves.

If you would like to come to the studio for your work experience, we recommend getting in touch early. We get a lot of enquiries and we can only take one student at a time. Give us a call on 01524 555789 or email eleanor@photobaby.co.uk

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