Month: February 2023

There is one mistake that refuses to leave my mind, despite it maybe not being the most disruptive to my work, it sits in my consciousness because it was perhaps the first big oopsie I had done when working for someone else.

At the time, I had just begun doing paid event photography work for some clients. Nothing too much or too high paying, just some deeds for family friends for a few bucks here and there. Gig by gig, I began to just think higher and higher of myself. I was having really difficulty delivering work that clients would really like, and though I spent a lot of time touching up my work, capturing itself at events was never a challenge. However, at the peak of the moment I sat where my ass needed to be thrown off and humbled, just that happened.

My friend’s father owns an event videography and photography company. I had known this for a while and had always been interested in maybe joining him on a gig. So I asked my friend if he could ask his dad if there were any events coming up that I could maybe slide into. 

“I think a photographer dropped from one of the events he’s doing, a wedding or something.” is what he came back to me with. Perfect, I thought to myself, so I emailed his father and offered my hand in ‘sub-contractory’ to him (along with supplemental photos of the 1 wedding I had shot beforehand). 

The wedding went not as planned, I had jumped the gun in what I believed my capability was. It was an absolutely massive party, bigger than any wedding I had been to in my life, and probably at least 10 fold the size of the only one I had previously worked on. Though that wasn’t too big of an issue, it was actually plus in some ways. The biggest nerve racking part for me was the other photographers and videographers there. They were way out of my league in skill and equipment. They swooped in and out of areas capturing left and right with the swiftness of a bird and the speed and stealth of a cat. I stumbled around the crowded hot spots and sheepishly asked to take photos of people. Though my work wasn’t as clean and stellar as the other professionals there, I still managed to get some stuff. But the oopsie came towards the end of the night. There was a big surprise choreographed dance that the bride and the groom were going to perform at in the middle of the giant dance area that the event capturers were notified of before hand. As we  gathered to our discussed between each other spots, the dance began, and quickly a large crowd formed around the 2 of them.

My camera battery died 15 seconds later. I panicked and looked around at the dense wall of bodies that separate me and an extra battery in my camera bag. I forced my way through the crowd, definitely bothering many of them (and being very unlike both a cat and a bird). I came back and the climax of the evening had finished, my sd card empty of the entire moment.

I told the other photographers and they were ensuring me that it didn’t matter, they got great shots and coverage of it. I told my friends father after the event and he told me “it’s fine”. But he never reached out to me again unsurprisingly. My ass got extremely humbled that evening, and it completely changed my routine for event work. Not only do I study hard for what the event may look like, but I triple prepare not only for the full event, but before each moment that may come up too.

I always find it really hard to quantify the skills and weaknesses that I find within myself, it being such a gray zone of comparison with no quantifiability. Though breaking these assets into “soft” and “hard” skills definitely allow me to think about the subject and put a direct pointer to what they are for me.

I would say my soft skills are: Adaptability, Conflict Management, Resourcefulness. Regarding adaptability, the final outcomes of projects that I work on often look drastically different than my original ideas or proposals. When going into something new, I often go with a very rough outline. This allows me to not be stuck to one idea and branch out to wherever a project leads. The adaptability also accounts for the second soft skill of “Conflict Management”. I mainly refer to creative differences for this soft skill. Since what I tend to work on is such a collaborative process, it’s bound to have people with different opinions on what is best for the project. When it comes to me having a different mindset regarding what’s best, I avoid antagonizing the opposing party and try to compromise since I do try to see their perspective. Resourcefulness also branches off from adaptability, however, where skill one comes in when willing to split down a separate path, resourcefulness comes into play when I have to go down one path and am not given the easiest materials to do so and finding other methods to lie on the same track.

Hard skills were a lot harder to determine since they seem to be a lot more precise and less subjective. However, the 3 that I feel like I portray the strongest are technology comprehension, sufficient knowledge of editing softwares, and presentation skills. Technology wise, I have always felt pretty literate; I enjoy coding a lot which has helped me through a lot of technical difficulties fixing small bugs for projects I work on. Editing wise, I am mainly proficient in Premiere but I have been forced to use Resolve and Final Cut in the past so I am relatively familiar with those as well. I love presenting things; most people I know don’t, however I just love talking to a crowd, so presentation skills, specifically comfortability, is definitely a strong suit of mine.

Two soft skills I would like to work on are commitment and time management. Commitment to specific ideas is a big issue of mine, I often get excited about a project I want to pursue and then eventually lose passion part way through it. I want to learn how to commit fully to projects to finish them out to the max. Time management is another big issue for me. Though I do complete almost all my work by the deadline, I often find myself crunching last minute to complete it. (Such as this blog post assignment)

A hard skill I would definitely like to improve on, and this maybe a bit to specific, is mastering excel spreadsheets. My mom is an accountant and keeps everything in excel and it seems like such a useful resource to be proficient in that it is definitely up high in my mind of things to learn. Networking is the hard skill I feel I need to improve on, though I don’t think I am uncomfortable meeting new people and engaging in conversation, I feel as though I have difficulty presenting myself in a way that would be beneficial to my career, such as acting more professionally and engaging in topics that can lead to discussion of opportunities.