I have some things happening at the moment that may mean I can move on from the paper.
Two schools, the one I used to work for and one I am now associated with have coincidentally offered the potential of some real hours and an employment commitment for next year coming.
The jobs that I enjoy the most at the paper usually involve sport, drama, music or schools. The sorts of things you find a lot of at….well…..schools.
I have never been a proper fit for the paper, shunning their older gear, processes, software, even computers and failing to feel part of the photo pool “team” if there is such a thing. I even struggle with their attitudes some times.
Tired of the “them and us” mentality, while I am trying to foster stronger connections to the journalists (you know, team work, cool idea that might catch on) and feeling like I am swimming against a tide of their making while often seeing a better way, have worm me down.
I use my own M43 gear and my $1500au Mac with DaVinci and Capture 1/ON1 to process, the issue $3500au HP with a full Adobe suite is used to upload only and my Nikon kit sits in a cupboard collecting dust.
Before doing this job, one of my very first for the paper last year, I was shown what was done the year before. Coming from a school environment, my inner voice said “you can and did do better in your last job, just look at the subject matter!”. Going with my gut, I shot like a school photographer letting the kids create the shot, not a newspaper tog controlling the situation and got one of my favourite images. Since then, the paper has ground me down until I was genuinely worried I had lost something.
Choosing will be tough, but a nice problem to have. One seems to be effortlessly able to offer flexibility and security, the other is less able to although trying hard, but the less flexible school has a two campus dynamic and I do miss the variety the younger kids add. I also have stronger contacts there from my previous three years.
It has been a good learning base, allowed me to adapt and grow, but overall, the needs and processes of a paper are less than ideal for me and my way of shooting than I need.
Giving it all up and just being a happy hobbyist even seems more enticing at the moment than sticking with the paper.
I will, it seems, leave a hole at the paper as my video gear and skill set have been useful in that changing space, and my affinity with the gentler, more socially minded subjects is appreciated, but that is for the paper to sort out. These were not a result of any training or gear allowances from the paper, they are all me, so I will be taking them with me.
I guess they know now what is easily achievable with video in particular so a bar has been set.
However, even that video was limited to a podcast done well enough (26 eps so far growing from 2000 to 15000+ views/wk) and the daily, straight out of camera, fly by my seat clips, 30 minutes in the making all up (shooting and editing) all while shooting stills. It seems I am the only one willing to turn one out every story, even if they are generally poor by definition.
Some jobs touch on a level of excellence I am after, but they are few and far between and the results are often truncated in the extreme.
Satisfying as it can be when it comes off, I want more than that. I am equipped for and keen to do better. I am sick of seeing work and thinking “I can do that” with little opportunity to do it, while perfecting compromise. There is a ton of gear that never gets a look-in, skills ever improving and cameras running on basic settings.
I need an outlet and some room to move.
One school wants video specifically and is where it started, the other is an open canvas with multiple opportunities for growth. The thing about video I am finding is, unless you produce it, nobody seems to know what can be done.
Photos are usually commissioned with a low bar of expectation, but you can star if you do better. Video seems to suffer from even lower expectations and awareness**.
For stills, there is nothing left to prove and much to happily cut loose. Captioning is a skill I have now, but one I will be happy to use sparingly as is posing photos, something I personally always avoided, but feel more capable with now. Time pressures equal poor or limited results and limiting gear to “only what goes in the bag” is frustrating.
I will miss sport, but again, no captioning or time limits.
One school even won several state titles this year, so I will likely get more than enough sport to keep my eye in and be better able to do them when there. Lots of heart, no elitism, decent enough speed and action with characters aplenty and no captioning.
I have shot national grade basketball, netball, cricket, BMX, motor sport, golf, soccer and AFL. Done that, time to move on. Some would miss that, I will not. I actually enjoy the local stuff more anyway.
Even shooting for the paper, I managed to capture a St Pats student, so yes, plenty of opportunity.
This last is a real issue because even compared to the other togs at the paper, I am limited to what I can carry in to work for two to four days a week, before I further limit myself to what I take to a job. They have supplied gear, long established habits and often pool cars allocated semi permanently to stash extra things. I don’t.
Only on the weekends do I get to park within fifteen minutes walk of work using the work car park and on those days I take a day bag, sports backpack and personal bag, but still no allowance for stands, mods or extra lights etc*. On a bad day, I have to walk back to the car with my video kit, day bag and personal bag.
I cannot leave much behind because I need it for other jobs and to be honest a little bit of me does not want to make that more permanent connection.
The flexible school has a strong music and drama department and a full photo studio.
But so does the other with a good return from a smaller faculty.
The less flexible school also lacks a recording and photo studio, which is where my go-anywhere studio could come in to play.
On one hand I have more to offer one, but less room to move, the other offers more freedom, but is more self sufficient.
Interesting future ahead I hope, one that will better settle me and my place in the world.
*I had to laugh to myself the other day when one of the other togs commented on how much gear I tote around as I walked in and he walked out the door past his three-screen, camera and lens cluttered desk, full locker and gear cabinets, with his enormous 400 f2.8 and Z9 to shoot some cricket. My kit was everything I need from my own computer, lenses from 16-600 (equivalent), four cameras, video and flash gear, all carried in one trip and not really that heavy. That is me pure and simple. I also shot my cricket with a 75-300 and EM1 mk2 and nobody complained.
**Yesterday I covered a board meeting for a not for profit and there was a video made for one of their projects. The interviews were 1-2 people on a stool in front of a green screen with a “New York loft” background, the rest of the footage was pretty standard gimbal movements etc.
This was an example to me of better than amateur gear and technique, but used fairly basically. The lighting was not even properly motivated, coming in from the opposite side to the background lighting and with totally the wrong colour temp. I know not everyone will have noticed these things, but they would have responded on some level instinctively.
I am continually surprised how video holds its mystique. I am no expert, but in a year or so, even I have gone from poor to semi-pro, something I could not have done in a stills photography paradigm.