Internships don’t usually come with position titles, so the ad on Craig’s List for an Intern – Gallery Photographer and PhotoShop Editor, caught my eye. The internship called for a student who owned and was an adept user of a DSLR camera with on-board flash. This pricey piece of equipment would have set any student back at least $600 to $3000 in the lower price range. Additionally, the job required good digital photo editing skills and the availability to work 8 to 12 hours a week for 8 weeks or more.
The intern’s job duties entailed photographing numerous antiques (with the intern’s OWN CAMERA), editing and retouching the photos, then uploading them to websites where the antiques were to be sold. Rather than assisting, the intern would essentially be doing the exact same work as a professional photographer, retoucher, editor and digital production team whose services could easily total many thousands of dollars for this kind of job. The intern, on the other hand, was to be paid the exultant sum of zip-zilch-nada. Actually it was more like MINUS zip-zilch-nada, since the employer made no mention of paying the intern’s expenses. Assuming the intern worked three days a week for 8 weeks, the transportation tab alone could total a minimum $120.00. Tack on the cost of camera batteries, memory cards and that intern was about to PAY up to $300 bucks for the privilege of saving that antique broker a huge hunk of money.
But hold on, you say, what about the professional experience the intern would receive? Along with the portfolio boost of published photos and online exposure to potential clients? Yes, the ad also pointed out these advantages — along with words that are magic to a beginning photographer: “Full Photo Credit.” Curious, I visited the employer’s website and there — Among zillions of small, crowded photos of antiques — not a single photo credit was visible. Of course the employer hadn’t specified a “visible” photo credit, so a photo credit could certainly have been buried deep somewhere inside the text.
As to the style and quality of the photos — they appeared to be strictly low-end, catalog shots. The lighting in all the photos was identical and every antique was silhouetted against an identical white background. So not only would a photographer’s skill and style not be further developed on this job, they could easily be set back some.
Nor did any other of the usual advantages of internships — like networking and learning from experts in one’s field of interest — appear to apply here. Because the intern was going to be working pretty much alone, taking the photos and editing them (on a slow, cheap version of PhotoShop, it turned out, known to crash a lot), there would be few, if any, people to network with. And with no other photographer on the scene, let alone one with expert ability and experience, the intern would have no mentor to help sharpen photo skills.
From where I sit, it looked like this employer was taking advantage of a tight, super-competitive job and intern market. What do you think?
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