My Work Experience Week by Megan McClintock

My name is Megan McClintock, I am a student at JCC and for my work experience week I decided I wanted to do something photography related, as it is a career I have considered for the future, so I went to Christina Lauder Portraits.

During my week with Christina, I learnt new various photography skills such as how to work with lighting to make a photo look more soft and flattering or more hard and dramatic. Also I learnt how Christina likes to edit her photos in ‘Lightroom’ and ‘Photoshop’ before developing them.

Over a few days, I did a school project which was needed for homework. This was to produce a picture similar to David Hockney’s. For this, I had Jade standing against a background Christina had and I zoomed right in and took a photo of each block with a slight overlap, then we put them into photoshop and made the collage then added a few frame effects at the end so you could see the separate pictures. This took a long time as there was over 70 photos to put together! Also, the lens I used to take the photos was extremely heavy as it was the biggest one Christina had.

Another thing we did was have a photoshoot between us and as another girl from school went there to do her work experience at the same time. We took dresses in and did lots of different poses then afterwards we went through and edited the ones that we liked with the assistance of Christina.

On Wednesday we took a walk down to florist to get some flowers and nice pot to put them in so we could take some photographs of them and then edit them afterwards. (The photo used is Christina’s)

Being a photographer was more hard work then I expected it to be! You have to have the right angles, and backdrop and the lighting at the exact position and brightness. Also you have to have the perfect composition for the subject that is being photographed.

On Thursday because the weather was nice, me and Jade took a walk around Burbage to photograph main places for the kids at the playgroup where they could visit. We also had another try at a different Hockney style picture, but it didn’t finish off as well as we expected so we didn’t use it.

Overall, I had a fantastic week with Christina and enjoyed it a lot! I liked how every day we did and learnt something different and how it was relaxed yet we still got a lot of work done. I would definitely recommend visiting Christina for work experience or if you would like any photos taking. I would also like to thank Christina for a great week and being such a lovely, helpful lady throughout my week.

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