Dealing With Someone Using My Work

This morning I woke up to a message telling my that one of my photographs had been used without my permission or credit by Red Bull, to advertise a game event that they are organizing with the Digital Institute London.

Whilst I am flattered that my work was good enough to be used this way, I'm upset that I wasn't notified in any way. Part of the reason I'm uncomfortable with this, is because that photograph was a WIP that I intended to edit and clear up once I had more time.

I was very confused where this image had been found, initially. I've only ever posted it on the class Facebook page to promo my work, but the image they used seemed too high quality to have been taken from Facebook. I then realized that I had sent the image to a colleague a few weeks ago for an entirely unrelated project, and that I had heard she had been working with the Digital Institute London. Because of this, I decided to email her to see if I could clear anything up...

Family Photo Shoots - Building My Portfolio

With me wanting to get back into photography, I've been taking on some of the shoot requests my family has been asking me for. As well as this, I've been looking for casual event photography opportunities that I don't mind doing for free. I realised my cousin was organising a Christening for her son, with no photographer, so I sent her a message offering to help out...

(UPDATE: 3/5 - My cousin said she'd love it if I could photograph the christening, that she adored my photos and that she had intended to ask me anyway!)

One of the family requested shoots that I recently took on was a photo shoot of my sister and her partner. I really wanted to get more practice with portrait photography, so this was a good situation for me. Some of the photos I took can be seen below...

Union Team Member Process - Applying and Being Interviewed for a Marketing Job

Whilst eating at one of the uni venues one evening, I noticed an advert on the display screens that the Students' Union was advertising for applications for a few jobs around the university. While I was interested in working in the Union venues casually, I intended to apply in September when I knew more about my schedule whilst on my Master's. But then I noticed one of the positions they were advertising for was marketing for the Union. This seemed like the perfect opportunity for me to get more real world marketing, design and SM management experience, whilst helping to fund my Master's. The application deadline was that night, so I had to rush through my application, but I luckily still had my partner to proof read it for me. 

Below, you can some screenshots from my online application...

The next week, I had an interview. Something I always struggle with with interviews is what to wear. I, of course, want to come across very professional and put-together, but I think it's very important to maintain a sense of self in my interview outfits (especially when applying to work for a fresh, youthful company like the Union, or a lot of the companies I am looking to for the future). Below is what I went for - a formal blazer, slim fit dress trouser, brogues, but paired it with a casual plain, black tee and some funky makeup...

During the interview, I was extremely nervous and felt I rambled a bit. Because of this, I found myself apologising a lot. Luckily, my interviewers were very kind about this, but in the future I intend to be more aware of this when going into interviews. Other than this, I was very happy with my pre-interview prep, as a lot of the questions I had practised and rehearsed answers for came up. I also did some research on the Union beforehand to make sure I knew who all the relevant people there were for me. I was also very lucky that I could use a lot of things I'd learnt from my SCA job to inform my interview answers. 

Something that did come up was that - although I was applying for the general marketing position, not the graphic design one - I had experience in graphic design. Because of this, one of the interviewers asked me if I could send them some examples of my work after the interview. Because of this, I had to quickly update my portfolio (shown below). I also reworked my CV before the interview (to include my new experiences and career goals), in case it was requested...

UPDATE: I found out today that I got the job! In the job offer, I also received feedback saying that I interviewed very well. I look forward to starting my new job in the next few weeks!

Emm's Wedding - Negotiating Event Photography

When I was younger, I did a lot of event photography, particularly wedding and christenings, and this is quite widely known in the small, country town that I grew up in. From this, I had an acquaintance of mine message me on Facebook asking if I was still available to do this, as she'd seen my previous work through a friend.

As I haven't done a wedding in almost 4 years, this took a bit of thinking. I am always very wary of deciding what to charge because, while I'm not a 'professional' photographer, weddings are really stressful and take a huge amount of planning, editing and sorting. Luckily, I remembered the way I used to organise wedding pricing, which was giving 'module options' - so, offering a variety of parts of the wedding that people usually want photographed, and letting the client pick and choose which bits they do and don't want. This can be seen in the screenshots below of my conversation with Emma...

We are currently organising a time to meet up in person so I can get all the details and make sure we're on the same page. From here, I'll draw up a basic contract agreeing upon the price and the content they will receive and how/when. I intend to take a 20% deposit upfront. This is something I've never done within photography before, but want to get in the habit of for my own security.

UPDATE: 4/5 - Emma contacted me enquiring if she could pass my details onto her cousin who is getting married next year!

McCree + Lifeline - Pin-Up Games Zine Artwork

As part of our fundraising for our degree show, my classmates and I decided to produce a zine centred on video game characters in pin-up poses. I volunteered to produce two pieces for this to help fill out the zine a bit.

To make sure my pieces added the most to the zine that they could (as I was worried they wouldn't be the best, artistically), I decided I had to consider what would sell best. Because of this, I chose two of the more popular games at the moment that I noticed were missing from the zine (Overwatch and Apex Legends). I also decided to do one male piece and one female piece, with entirely different themes, so as to appeal to the most people possible.

Below are my two final pieces for the zine...

After finishing these, I found out that the class were still looking for someone to produce supporting pages for the zine (back cover, inside cover, contents page). I volunteered to do this to give me more graphic design practise. I also wanted to draw sexy Pacman...

The Big Read

Recently, I produced artwork for a collective artbook to encourage teens to read. For this, we had to create art showing our favourite book when we were that age. I chose Carry On, by Rainbow Rowell. My artwork is fairly simple compared to others', but as this brief was not too specific with design, I decide to work to my strengths. I also modified the fonts I used in this piece to make them more suitable...

Today, we mounted our pieces for the Big Read project for a public exhibition. This was great as, not only did it give me more experience with mounting and displaying my work, but it also put my work in a public place (with quite heavy foot traffic), getting my name out a bit.