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shot by Ailera

My photography internship experience

11.27.16.lifestyle0

When I finished university, I was excited to try and get a creative internship or work as an assistant – it’s a really great way to see how real companies work, to learn from creatives who have advanced a lot in their field. I was lucky to find an internship that sounded cool quite quickly, after a couple of weeks of looking – and the best part, is that it was paid! I really needed a job at that point.

My internship was a photography/retouching/creative brand director assisant spot at:

(nail and make up brands). The first brand is well known for their nail products and polishes, but at the time I worked there, they were about to release their make up line and so needed a lot more pictures – I was there to take some in house pictures for their social media and blog and to help out with all the retouching and image filing that was piling on for the upcoming releases.

The first week I felt like I was the luckiest – it all felt incredible and just the place for me. My first two days were accompanying the creative brand director to photo shoots – first a product, still life photo shoot, next – a campaign shoot with a model. I took some behind the scenes pictures, tried to arrange some of the new products for some pictures that could possibly go to
their instagram/other social media channels, helped out with prop/background holding. I wasn’t the one shooting the main pictures, but it felt great being there, seeing how they came up with styling, make up and mood for the campaign and how they were shooting it.
My usual day would mostly be around 9 hours of retouching of their product shots.  Sometimes of things that I’ve shot myself for their social media, which I would do once or twice a week. I would spend a lot of time color matching the swatches/product imagery and I’d feel a bit blind after that, it gets hard to tell colors after hours of doing it. But I loved retouching, so if I can retouch all day and get paid for it, that sounds like a great deal to me!

Things that I learned:

  1.  When shooting images for a company’s social media, blogs, website, to keep as collateral imagery – you always have to think if it’s on brand, that’s one of the most important things. You need to think about every setting – does it scream the brand’s name? Is it the ideal style, background, colors you could use? It’s okay to experiment, but if the answer to these questions is not a confident yes, it’s very likely that the images won’t be used, so you’re just wasting your time and in turn – the company’s money. I think I only really learned this at the very end of my internship, but to be fair, I felt like the main brand wasn’t as well defined at that time, and I was never totally sure which colors/textures/backgrounds is definitely fitting. As an intern, I was
    never part of any meetings that would have helped me more with that, but I would definitely advise my past self now to have more in depth talks with the other creatives there about why something fits the brand well and why something isn’t working.
  2. I haven’t done such in depth product/nails/make up retouching before, and since I had to retouch a lot of that during the internship, I learned techniques I never knew about before or at least didn’t think of using because I didn’t find them very useful.
  3.   Everyone from different departments were sitting nearby, so I’d hear a lot about what was going on in the company and I’d see how different parts of it work, which was really interesting as I didn’t really have a clue before. I saw how they choose shades, how they name them, we all participated in trying the new products/ nail polishes and would give feedback about it (so yes, sometimes I was just doing my nails at/for work…)
  4. When I started working there, we bought a few studio lights to have a small in house studio. I never worked much in a studio, except when I studied in the university, so during my internship I could experiment a lot and see what works best, I also worked a lot more with products and still life/flat lays, which I don’t really do normally.
  5. How to prepare, organize images and upload them to FTP servers. It might sound boring, but I didn’t mind it much and it’s useful to know.
  6. When I started, I didn’t know anything about make up or nails (I always only had the most basic beauty products and would only buy new ones once something ran out), but after dealing with make up each day, I became a lot more interested in it – I started to watch some youtube videos and started to care for my skin more, I use a bit more products now (though it’s still very basic).

 

 Extra things that were awesome:

  1.  The office was really cute and colourful, I was greeted through a big arch of flowery hedge (hedges were around the room everywhere). They had a London red phone box inside, their lunch area was a park – not a real one, but the fake grass, the wooden benches and tables made it feel like that.
  2. Almost everyone in the office was a girl around my age and they were the sort of people who would gather around to celebrate a dog’s birthday (meaning, there were some great people there).
  3. Each Friday we would have snacks and drinks at the end of the day, sometimes we would also go out and that was fun too.
  4. Free samples! I’m still using their lip products and nail polishes.

Things that weren’t that great: 

  1.  Sometimes I needed to re-do things multiple times until it was approved – an obvious annoying thing when you’re working for someone else.
    Especially, when you don’t really agree with some decisions sometimes, but still have to do it again.
  2. My perfectionism is not that great when I’m working not just for myself. I would take longer than I needed working on something to make it perfect, when in any company it’s all about delivering results quickly. And I usually still wouldn’t like it in the end, which is probably because I still didn’t consider what I was working on there my area.

But I wouldn’t end on a negative note – it was great six months!

One of my favorite days was when Lottie was doing a takeover of Superdrug’s instagram, so I took a lot of images for that with the team:

And some behind the scenes images from campaign shoots:

Temporary tattoos shoot

Chalk Collection campaign behind the scenes:

One of the final shots: (I edited the colors on these)

Southbeach Socialite collection campaign shoot behind the scenes:

One of the final shots:

If you made it to the end of seriously the longest blog post that I’ve ever written, I can’t believe it – thank you! And if you have any questions, ask me below (or if you’d just like to let me know you found this interesting at all, that would be great to hear, as I don’t normally share things like that).

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Comments

  1. Maria

    12.30.16. at 9:39 pm

    Happy to see you're getting new experience and learning! If I may ask – what and where did you study?

    Reply
  2. kristinahojholt

    02.13.18. at 10:21 am

    Hello would you mind stating which blog platform you're using? I'm looking to start my own blog soon but I'm having a hard time choosing between BlogEngine/Wordpress/B2evolution and Drupal. The reason I ask is because your design and style seems different then most blogs and I'm looking for something unique. P.S Apologies for being off-topic but I had to ask!

    wildlife & travel photography training program

    Reply

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the one and only day on the beach last year with a the one and only day on the beach last year with a nice team 🌊☀️
for @sugarandstylefashion 
style @jubbi.s 
model @xoxo.salome
𝘧𝘰𝘳 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘴𝘵𝘢𝘳𝘴 𝘐 𝘬𝘦𝘦𝘱 
𝘢𝘴 𝘮𝘦𝘮𝘰𝘳𝘪𝘦𝘴
𝘰𝘧 𝘶𝘯𝘤𝘩𝘢𝘳𝘵𝘦𝘥 𝘱𝘢𝘵𝘩𝘴 
𝘐 𝘵𝘰𝘰𝘬 𝘪𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘯𝘪𝘨𝘩𝘵
🌙✨
gorgeous model @drew____draws @basemodelsuk
𝘧𝘰𝘳𝘦𝘴𝘵 𝘪𝘴 𝘮𝘺 𝘩𝘰𝘮𝘦 
𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘱𝘦𝘢𝘤𝘦 𝘐’𝘭𝘭 𝘧𝘪𝘯𝘥 
𝘤𝘰𝘮𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘣𝘢𝘤𝘬 𝘵𝘰 𝘮𝘦🌿🍃
beauty @vitorialima0ficial @thesquadmanagement shot last year.
Which one is your favourite?
1, 2, 3, or 4? Most beautiful eyes of @maleika_har 1, 2, 3, or 4? Most beautiful eyes of @maleika_harrower on 35mm film😍. New blog post is out with more film pictures from this shoot, follow the link in my bio. My cheap old film camera actually did quite well I think for many of these.
Hope everyone is having a nice and chill beginning Hope everyone is having a nice and chill beginning of the year. At least I’m definitely not pushing myself hard on new goals or resolutions yet and giving myself time, as it’s not been easy. It might be a new year for which I’m really hopeful for, but same me and a lot of the same issues to overcome, it was nice to just chill for a little bit. Let me know how you’ve been getting on❤️
.
First few pictures from my shoot with @charlotteabailey_ which I loved, its so good when a shoot just feels like hanging out and creating something together ❤️(see the good vibes of the second pic 👌)
1, 2 or 3? Hope you had nice and cosy holidays des 1, 2 or 3? Hope you had nice and cosy holidays despite everything going on this year. I know many of us have been away from family and friends and it’s really not been easy. But this will pass, and I really hope for a better next year ✨
Model Manon @moonmootch @thesquadmanagement. Make up by @vickyalice
Love this close up from the shoot for @sugarandsty Love this close up from the shoot for @sugarandstylefashion, makes me want to do some beauty shoots. 👉Swipe for some more from the shoot . Full set on my blog now (follow the link in the bio) 😊.
Which one is your favourite? 
Gorgeous @pinheiro.alexandra with amazing make up by @vickyalice and styling by @jubbi.s. 
Loved this lighting, got lucky with the window light (all natural).✨✨
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