edit: ok, I knew I could count on Hubski to point me to the obvious right choice :) I guess fear was talking since I feel vastly under qualified as a photographer right now. But that just means I got to suck it up and start learning. Now time to convince my mom I wont kill myself on the road and get some driving practice too. Love you guys, and thanks so much for taking the time to reply. As soon as I plan my trip, gotta put all huskiers on the map to meet!
This opportunity presented itself to me, and i'm kind of torn whether I should accept or not. I only got a couple days to make the decision, so I figured I'd ask you guys for advice :)
There's this Rock company, (not the cool music kind) that's offering me to become their official photographers for the next 5ish month. Driving around the States and Canada photographing monuments, building facades. cemeteries and sometimes kitchen counters.
PROs:
- Maximum travel!!!
- Photography's fun. I'll learn an lot for sure.
- 2k/month, company car and gas, 150$ per diem for airbnb and food. As someone that's nearly broke, a (finally) paid opportunity is nice. If I'm careful, It's a lot I can save up.
- They seem cool and flexible on hours/days I get work done as long as everythings done.
- If I got the energy after a full week's work, it's also cool videos for my travel vlog.
CONS:
- I'll be away from my boyfriend this whole time :( He said he can visit if i'm 6-7h drive away... we could probably make it work but it's shitty.
- I have less than 100 hours of driving under my belt (this one mainly stresses my mom out, but it's a little nerve-racking for me too)
- Summer plans go down the drain. Probably won't make it to my friend's wedding (the 2k expense was worth it if it's a 1 month trip, but spending 1500 for a week is way over my budget). No fun times in Montreal with my friends. And some (free) work engagements I'll have to abandon.
- Maybe no burning man? ( I don't know why that's on my mind since I don't even have tickets yet)
- Applied for this grant with this cool project i'm part of, but i can't be employed to get it. So they'd have to find someone else and start over. Feel bad ditching people mid-way...
And to be honest, it's kind of scary in general. Don't know if that's a pro or con. But i've never really been by myself for a long time - longest was my exchange semester in Poland and that was like 2 months max.
What do you guys think? I'd probably be all over this if I was single and without prior engagements. It's like this attached adult life I wanted to avoid snuck up on my somehow.
"Should I bum around North America for five months taking pictures on someone else's dime?"
are you fucking kidding me
1) have at least two bodies. This gives you two lenses to work with quickly and gives you a fallback if one fails.
2) Have more lenses than you think you need. At a minimum, a decent macro, a tilt-shift, a list of primes and a long-throw zoom.
3) If you're not using lightroom now, start. You're about to be swimming in data and if you can't move quickly and get shit canned you will drown. Shoot tethered on the job if you can.
4) A decent manfrotto tripod (a real one) and a decent gorillapod or two.
5) A couple flashes that can be triggered remotely.
Buy all this shit. use parents' credit cards if you have to. Your window is too steep for a long-term rental. Take everything out of boxes, get decent cases for all of it, and put the boxes somewhere safe. You're going to relist it all on eBay when you're done and you'll take maybe a 20% hit, maybe 30%.
Get a CAA/AAA card. You're going to want to never have to worry about breaking down.
See if you need a work permit to be doing commercial photography in the US for 5 months. If you do, try and get one. If you don't, come up with a cover story.
If you have any sort of agenda, you can fly your boyfriend to you. 5 months is manageable. The trick is to spend to see people. Just because your car is in Michigan doesn't mean you can't fly to Montreal for a weekend.
I might even get a shitty little voice recorder or whatever to take memos as you drive. Because you're going to find the most interesting ways to get where you need to go and you're going to take pictures whenever you see something interesting and you're going to caption your photos every night and you're going to transcribe your notes because fuckin'A, girl, someone is paying you a pretty sum to go be a travel journalist. I don't think Conde Nast pays that well. Even if you end up with shit at the end of it you'll have learned basically how to do travel journalism on someone else's dime.