Day 4: Combat Boots? Hooah.

    No matter how early I go to bed, I’m still tired by 11AM the next morning.  And as the days go by chatting with my fellow interns, I discover I have more and more to toss and turn about. 
    I’m a young photographer, and not just in the sense of “Hey there youngin’ turn down your music!” but also in the sense that I’ve only been shooting for about two years. I came in clueless, and I’ve slowly been taking a little here and there to build my knowledge.  I have one SLR- a starter Nikon, three lenses, one strobe flash, and one filter.  Now, I’ll grant that I have more experience in Military Media than anyone else here.  Today the newsroom was populated by a couple writers a little nervous about interviewing a cadre whose fiance was killed in Iraq last year.  I probably would have strangled someone for the chance at that story.  So I guess perhaps that’s why I’m on staff here.  I speak civilian, primarily, but I can, sometimes, translate the military jargon into the stupid simple.  But I am getting more and more nervous about my skills behind the camera.
    At USC, VisCom is kind of an umbrella of sorts.  A company would hire me if they want someone on hand as a jack of all trades.  I can do graphic design, animation, layout design, video editing, multimedia projects, photography, informational graphics, and I can even do a little reporting and copy-writing. Western Kentucky University, however, offers every photography class imaginable to their photog students.  Lighting, multimedia, photo story (which, evidently, is different from photo essays), and god knows what else.  One of their classmates has graduated to become the photo editor at the New York Daily News.  They speak in K-balance versus white balance, 30D vs D500, Manual vs Program, those two strobes vs these three pocket flashes.  I don’t have all of this crap. I’m not even sure what a pocket flash IS.  I've taken three photography classes, grand total.  Most of what I know has been self-taught.
     I feel about three inches tall right now. I feel like I don't know squat about cameras.
     I do know that standing directly behind a drill sergeant is how you get the best access to a good shot on a recruit.  I also know that military, on the job, want to be treated somewhere between a regular person and a highly-efficient machine.  I know to expect to be hated, and to respect the officers and NCOs despite being treated like shit.  Don’t act like a civilian and ask dumb questions, but don’t act like you’re high and mighty military either.  You will stick out like a sore thumb, people will stare at you, and no one is really going to want to help you that much. These things I know.  I’ve learned how to work with them and how to bond with military to gain their very slow and hesitant respect. And I have no idea if any of that will help when it comes time to publish galleries.
     BUT I have been issued my combat boots and I’ve got socks to the knees on my Wal-mart list.  I’m here to network, expand my portfolio, and spend some time with the type of people I love - focused, passionate, loyal.  I'm here to learn about photography, my limits, and as much about the military life that I can. And learn I shall.  Though I can’t say that I’m going to invest time in absorbing how to sit there and take thirty shots setting the perfect K balance. I’ve never had the patience for it, and I doubt I ever will.  This is why I only plan on photographing until I decide to settle down, then I’ll go back into graphic design.  I am not a studio photographer, nor a fashion photographer, nor am I a commercial photographer. I’m a journalist, dammit.