My name is Rupert and for the past 8 week I have been on a Princes Trust course, doing a City and Guilds course on Personal Development and Contributing to the community. Which has been brilliant fun so far and I’m looking forward to the next 4 weeks till the end of the course! I’ve met some amazing people and I look forward to keeping in touch with them for years to come!
For the last two weeks of the course I have been on Work Experience with a small company with big potential in the heart of the Laine in Brighton, East Sussex. I came into this knowing a little bit about how to use a SLR, composition of photos and how to use Photoshop. Also how a photo studio works. Garage Studios is headed by Adam Bronkhorst the Studio manager; who is also one of three very good In-House photographers.
My first week here at Garage Studios was very strange as I arrived on Monday and was thrown in at a very strange deep end; as I had to really take a back seat and watch Kevin Mason on a Fashion shoot for a client. It was rather amazing watching him work away but it was really mayhem everywhere else, but none the less it was a different experience from what I was maybe expecting to happen!
The rest of the week was a little less stressful I was set a project to try and find some photographers that I’d never heard of before and say why I liked them and this was very interesting I also found a great photo sharing site Flickr! Off of which I found many new influential photographers and I am bound to use this site more now and use it for future reference.
I also helped design a flyer on Photoshop for Garage Studios which at then end of the first week I had completed and Adam had given it the all clear which I was very proud of because there was a lot of changing the photos around some of text had all gone tits up. But with a cool head and the help of Matt the other ‘In-house’ photographer we fixed it.
On Monday I went down to the printers and ordered 5000 of the flyers that I had helped design. To start handing out at an Event Adam and I are attending to help document the day and take along the ‘Pop-up’ Studio.
On Tuesday I helped Adam out on a Photo shoot for a client that wanted some photos for a Christmas postcard to send out. They wanted it to be really cheesy Christmas style so we had gone out and hired some bad Christmas jumpers (you know the ones that your grandma knits you and you really hate it but you feel obliged to wear it or your forced to by your parents just for Christmas Day). I helped Adam set up all the lighting and Christmas lights for the backdrop, also set up a soft box which was a lot easier than when I first tried setting it up the previous Monday. I helped out as well to set up the focus for the camera posing in as a model, which was a little different.
I’ve also done some research into Event companies and seeing if they would like us to come to any of their events and use our ‘Pop-up’ Studio. to take pictures of people coming to the event and documenting the event.
On Thursday, Adam, Tash and I went out to the Corn Exchange to shoot an event for Wired Sussex, the event was called Make It Into Media , they had local businesses, Universities and Colleges all talking about what they had to offer Post-Grads and Under-Grads alike. We arrived at 11.30 and had a quick change around, as the place where we were going to set up was not really there. After a few minor adjustments we eventually set up the ‘Pop-Up’ Studio, which consisted of a backdrop with the Garage Studios Banner and a gray background sheet, with a Beauty dish placed above the camera. The day seemed to be a big success with people such as Brighton’s Mayoress turning up to have a look around the event. The ‘Pop-Up’ Studio seemed to go down really well as we took lots of pictures of Students, lectures and business people from all over Brighton and Sussex. There where also a few people interested in what we do as a company and I tried to give them the best impression of what Garage Studios do. Such as: Photography Course, One to One Training,, Studio Photo shoots, Youth Work Shops and the ‘Pop-up’ Studio.
I have really enjoyed my time at Garage Studios and wishes them all the best in the future. Special Thanks to Adam Bronkhorst for allowing me to do these two weeks work experience and giving me an insight into the daily happening of a Photography Studio. I’ve had a really amazing time here. I hope to come back and see them again and see how they are getting on and to show them my work in progress..
Cheers to Adam Bronkhorst for letting come and bother him for two weeks. Kevin AKA DarkDaze for letting me watch him work and giving me some advice and support and Matt for just giving me some different tasks to do while I’ve been here! But not forgetting Tash for being a good laugh on Thursday at the event so that I wasn’t totally bored!
Rupert
