Après.

As the saying goes, if you play hard then you should also work hard, and so the hard work began. I now had a job one day a week at Glow, was organizing & preparing business with Jeff the captain of the Showboat to proceed with the photography onboard and was continuing to assist more photographers from the Studio. I also got in contact with various organizations at the time, for example CCP (Centre of Contemporary Photography) and the ACMI (Australian Centre of the Moving Image) with possible volunteer work in mind which I could use to learn a little more, meet new people & to more importantly build up my CV. I am now part of both their volunteering databases and receive weekly shift notifications but haven't had time yet to start any work...this is something I hope to do when i'm financially a little more stable, but the groundwork is done and im set to go when ive made my riches (hmm)!

I assisted a couple of times for photographer Ivan Lee- I J Productions. Together we photographed products for a shopping mall's Christmas Catalogue, things like iPods, jewelry, novelty xmas toys & sunny's (because of course you need them for an ozzy crimbo!) I learnt particularly on this shoot how important but fiddly & sometimes tedious creating correct reflections on a product can be, but well worth the effort; amazing what abit of silver/ gold/ black or white can do, or five bits more like, always at the most awkward angles to hold, you need a steady hand! We also more recently did a shoot for the 'Good Guys', which is a store equivalent to the UK Curry's or Comet, photographing training guide visuals for in store recruitment. very random but thats another thing you realize in the industry, there's a picture for everything and someone's got to take it and so there we were! These shoots were paid which was good for my bank status, and I also got my first freebie, as the bag that Ivan had with him on the day I mentioned I liked, and so he cleared it out and gave to me at the end! Love this job.

I also did my first photoshoot with Rob, the owner of Glow Studios and FuseFoto who I contacted and met originally. This was a food shoot for a new recipe book for celiac's, a gluten/ wheat free publication which I was excited about as the allergy runs in my family a little, so I got to learn a few tips in two loves of mine, cooking and photography; grandma your getting sent a copy of this book when its out in stores! One of the bonuses of doing a food shoot of corse is that you get to eat every dish/ course after the image is perfected. Its definitely not over-rated, its delicious, until you've eaten too much you feel sick, i didn't eat dinner that night or much the next day, but i'd do it all over again. One top tip that I learnt here was grabbing a bunch of leaves from a tree outside and arranging them in front of your flash can work wonders for natural shadows and diffused light, but don't tell Rob I told you that :)

I helped out on a Test Shoot too, for Tess, the girl i share the Bettina model agency job with. This was on location at a derelict old school, it was a fashion shoot and comically & temporarily named Dere-Licked (think Zoolander)! The set was pretty scary as it was pretty windy and so the broken hanging strip lights & metal work were banging and swinging about, not to mention the junkie needles scattered on the floor! Hair/ make-up and styling was done at this cool warehouse/ studio round the corner, everyone chipping in for free as it was a Test. We had two great models to work with, one female one male, the latter, Tess and I had to be as professional as possible with as he was too good looking, but it turned out he was the flirty one and us the well behaved! The shoot went really well, blessed with beautiful sunlight all day and we got plenty of single/ double page spread variations to play with as the final images were to be sent out for magazine submission. Not a bad day 'in the office'.