Changing Paths?

If you read my post on photography genres that I want to explore more (https://emmamages.wixsite.com/emphotos/blog-1/photography-genres-i-want-to-explore-more) you'd know that I don't like being restricted to just one thing. This whole website is all about photography because it's something that I love and I'm passionate about. But it's not the ONLY thing I'm passionate. I've also mentioned before that I've always known what career path I want to take...but can you have more than one path? I did a degree in Media and Communications because I loved every aspect of the media and always have done. So I thought it would be a good idea to change my website/blog up a bit so it isn't JUST photography based. I have already added an events tab which I'm making plans to add more to (See here - https://emmamages.wixsite.com/emphotos/events). And I'll be changing things up on my blog so I'm talking about other areas that I would actually like having a career in. Starting with this post. I want to talk about the other career paths that I may travel down in the future...you know, to keep my options open!

Radio

I had a summer job when I was at uni and it was working in radio production at a small community radio station. Let me tell you, I met such amazing and inspirational people during my time here. I did a lot of things for this station. The first summer I was there, I worked with two other employees that were around my age and we put together an hour piece about volunteering in the community and modern day slavery (weird combination I know but it seemed to have worked!) This took a lot of work to get right, especially considering that I had never done radio production before. We had to:

• Research the topics carefully

• Record and edited the piece

• Chose the songs we wanted to be played

• Record and edit the advertisement to put in between songs

Once all of this was done, we had to put it altogether and cut bits and pieces out if it went over time. Everyone that worked there also had to record and edit a news bulletin which was also a lot of fun. The second summer I was there I branched out a bit more. I was the only one to return from the previous year as the two people I was working with were focussing more on their studies so I did a lot of work on my own. This time I wanted to photographically document the time I spent there, so I took pictures of the employees and what they did and they used the photos that were taken for promotional purposes. I also did A LOT of interviews with some of the guests that came in. Which I was surprisingly good at! I always did my research on the people that I was interviewing, carefully planned the questions I was going to ask (always open ended) and made sure the person I was interviewing was completely at ease.

I REALLY liked my time at the radio station and although I haven't returned, if an opportunity came up to work at a different radio station I would snatch it up because I loved talking to the people that came in. No two days were the same.

Events

If you know me well, you'd know that I love going to concerts. For some reason, the organisation of the event always fascinated me. How does a festival such as Reading function? It's so huge! The planning of these kinds of events go on for months and it's all for just one weekend. But the organisation is done so incredibly well that the music lovers that attend will return annually. I want to be part of the behind the scenes team for an event. I want to see all the puzzle pieces be put together that created one fantastic music festival!

I have actually put on my own event whilst I was at uni. Okay, yeah it wasn't exactly Reading festival, but it was still a lot of fun to organise. Me and some friends of mine put on a fashion show on the outside space of our university to help raise money for a homeless charity. We collaborated with some designer students on their zero waste project to help them showcase their work. All the clothing was made out of recycled materials. It was fairly successful for how small the event was. We raised a good amount of money for an incredible charity and donated a load of clothes from the clothes bank that was also at the event. This took us about 3 months to organise and there was so much involved including:

• Marketing - social media, flyers, press releases

• Finding a venue

• Finding designers and models

• Working to a timetable

• Budgeting

And so much more! I would really like to explore this area more purely for the fact that, although it was stressful, I really liked doing it. We all contributed in every part of the event but my main role was the marketing.

Marketing/PR/Writing

I am most definitely a social media freak. Twitter is my most used app. I love sharing things with people especially when it comes to my work. I learnt very quickly that social media is pretty much the heart of all marketing because it can be seen by people all over the world. I made SEVERAL social media accounts for various projects at uni and I had to constantly keep them up to date until an assignment was over. One of these projects was for my "music promotion and pr" module. We had to get in to groups and find a musician in the area and well...promote them. We promoted a local DJ who wanted to get word out for one of his events he was organising. We had to:

• Prepare a press pack for him - press release, information about the artist etc

• Distribute press pack to various media outlets

• Photoshoot

• Design flyers

• Social media marketing

I liked this project because it covered a lot of areas. I was able to do; photography, write press releases, promotion, graphic design and it was satisfying because I knew all my hard work was being put to good use. We were able to help an upcoming artist and his event was a huge success.

I'm already in the process of exploring this area of the media more. I am currently volunteering for the outreach team at my local libraries where I am already helping them with promotion but I have also asked if I can do more on their social media pages, advertise their events, write press releases and design their posters. I'm really hoping that they will allow me to do so as I would like to contribute the skills that I learnt from this project to a good cause.

I can't stress enough that I will always love photography but what's wrong with keeping your options open? Everything that is mentioned in this post I loved doing and I've got to be honest, I miss doing it terribly! Although one thing I love about the media industry is that a lot of the time, everything crosses over. I can help organise and event and then take the press pictures. Or I could help promote a brand or an artist on a local radio station. Noticed that everything I mentioned included some sort of promotion or marketing? I have so many skills that can be transferrable no matter what area of the media I go in to and I don't want to waste them. So this website isn't just going to be photography anymore. It's still going to be a big part of it but I want to explore my options a hell of a lot more so you are sure going to be seeing some changes around here!