Week 1
My search for an internship has not been as difficult as I thought; I have applied to about 9-10 internships. I didn’t have a resume or cover letter so I quickly made one up. Being that I do not have a set portfolio, I am using my Instagram profile as a temporary portfolio. Since I am a photographer, I am looking for a photography/social media catered internship.

Some of the internships I have applied to are Jill Wachter Photography, Musee Magazine, One Chronicle Inc., The New Standard Edition, and Staple Pigeon clothing. So far, I’ve been declined for only the Jill Wachter internshp because the spots were filled. I have gotten replies from the majority of the rest for an interview.

So far I’ve only taken one interview, from The New Standard Edition, because they responded to me first. I don’t want to focus on multiple interviews, so I’m putting all of my eggs into one basket. The interview was a t a little coffee shop next to Union Square called Mi Grande. It was a very informal styled internship and it went very well. The co-owner, Evan Josloff, and another long time intern of theirs (Dylan) sat down with me and laid the job out for me. Evan also told me a little about himself. Although I don’t have any design work on my Instagram, my photography did enough talking. It’s looking good, I have to wait for them to get back to me now and see if I made it.

WEEK 2

So after a few days of deliberating, they (The New Standard) have decided to give me an internship. I’m relieved that getting one wasn’t hard but there’s a few things that they forgot to tell me. I was under the impression that only two days was required in office during the week, they want me to do at least 28 hours a week! Three days are required in office, and weekends do not count. I got to school three days a week and only two days are free during the weekdays. I want the internship but I don’t know how this is going to work out…

So I decided to give it a few days and look around for more internships to fit my schedule better, but no one is responding promptly. This is getting me a little annoyed because people are not being professional about the internship situation. If you put out an ad looking for interns, it’s only right that you respond to the people who apply, whether it’s for an interview or rejection.

A few days have passed, I’ve decided to accept the internship even though I need to figure out how to work out these weekly hours. I’m up for the challenge because I do want this opportunity, hopefully they’ll be willing to work with me schedule wise as much as I am with them.

WEEK 3

So after accepting the internship I’ve been waiting for them to contact me, I emailed them to see if they received my email, turns out they thought they replied to my acceptance email and didn’t. But now I have an internship, they want me to start February 24th, but I have class midday on Friday and that’s not possible.

I have now emailed them back with my schedule and the hours that I could work, I found only 22- 23 possible hours during the weekdays and I can do up to 6 hours from home. I’ve been waiting for them to email me back for a few days now, but I’m patient and I know they’re at the Agenda show in Las Vegas this week. Hopefully, everything is still copacetic, I’m ready to work.

WEEK 4

I have started at my internship with The New Standard Edition. So far it’s pretty easy going, I manage their social media accounts, mainly through Instagram. I have to plan all of the posts and captions, figure out what the best times are for engagement, and grow their audience. I post every day so it’s all about figuring out what I can post for them and stay politically correct.

So for the first 3 days, I’ve used on the spot photography of my own for posts because they have nothing to use. Their website is not updated and they’re getting ready for their Spring line, so I cannot use any of the new photos they have. I’m in the process of building up to the big reveal with small detail shots that I’ve taken on the spot. The engagement is decent o far, I’m building their following slowly but surely.

WEEK 5

The first week was cool, it’s not hectic yet but this internship is literally taking ALL of my time. I have to figure out how to manage this job with my remaining class schedule, I’m not doing work for any other class. The Spring line for the brand dropped Sunday night so now I can use their Spring images (thank goodness), but not too many of them are good. I also have to strategically space out the clothing shots so I have things to post down the line until they are sold out of the product. On Saturday I went to the Apollo to see a show with ASAP Ferg and Camron, thanks to The New Standard Edition. It was a cool show, lots of energy, but I didn’t get too many images.

Now that I’ve been there for a week, the owner, Evan, is getting more tedious. I have OCD and I want a clean looking feed for them, something cohesive; he wants to break the mold and go back to their old sporadic feed. I can’t just go back to the old feed, it bothers me, and my changes to their feed and content has brought in 50+ followers this week (I’m doing something right). I have to plan ahead now, it’s actually very difficult being that I am very particular about what I post because it represents the brand and me; Evan is also particular, but almost in the opposite way. I look forward to the future, though, but I have to catch up in my other classes this week.

WEEK 6 (VINE VS. SNAPCHAT)

So with this one, it’s the battle of two social media platforms; VINE VS. SNAPCHAT! Now before I get into this, my knowledge of these two apps all come from what I hear because I have never actually used these apps (I’ve had Vine but never had Snapchat). First, Snapchat. Snapchat is a platform closely related to the newer version of Instagram, rather than Vine. In Snapchat, you can document your daily life with 1 – 10-second videos, raw and uncut. You can Snap photos to people also (which they can see one I believe), and everything has a maximum existence time of 24 hours (stories), then they disappear FOREVER!!! Because of the time limit for snaps and temporary visibility times, Snapchat is probably the most explicit social media of any, with all of the nudes and X-rated videos that go around on there.

So now for Vine, it is not a documentary-styled app like Snapchat, but more so a quick comedy styled app. Videos are 6-seconds long, and you can be as creative as possible. A lot of online personalities got fame through Vine because of their creative ideas, and real life-based skits. You can also re-Vine like a Twitter retweet, which is why so many videos went viral from Vine. Vine is a focus on creativity, while Snapchat is a focus on daily life; but Vine videos never disappear like Snapchat. Also, one of the biggest things, filters, are on Snapchat and not Vine; yes, maybe they’re not relevant, but they’re a big selling point for people with Snapchat. That’s my comparison of Vine and Snapchat; Snapchat wins because Vine has gone out of business lol.

WEEK 7

New week, same stuff. This week my “boss” went to Hong Kong so my Internship hours were less because one of the other interns were in charge. For the next two weeks, I’ll have lesser internship hours and more hours for myself (and other school work). I need to catch up on my other school work, I have yet to turn anything in for my 2D Animation class, I need to get my work done. I did just get the Adobe programs on my personal computer, so now I can do work at home, and not just in school. The End, slow week.

WEEK 8 (Instameet)

This week was the Instameet or my event to network with new people. I didn’t get many photos at the meet but I did meet some new, cool people. One person I met was Jordan, an aspiring model whose also a college student. I got some shot of her and we also did a solo shoot, which was pretty good. Another dope person I met is Nick, known as Blackout.jpg on Instagram (#FREEBLACKOUT). He’s a very well-known photographer in the NYC street photographer scene, his photography is dope, but he deactivated his Instagram.

Another person I met was an Instagram model that goes by the name “NYC Lavish,” I totally forgot his real name. He was a cool dude, more chill than I expected, I got a couple pics of him too. Finally, I met Denny623, he’s an Instagram Fashion Blogger who dresses like he’s from the 70s. I wanted to get some pictures of him for a while, so I was happy I finally could (even though it wasn’t many). Overall I can say I had a successful networking week, met new people that are known in the photography field, so I’m happy. I’ll include a picture of Denny from the meet below.

WEEK 9

Overall, this week was a very productive week for me. I completed a presentation for Design Team; Had a successful weekend “shoot” with my Internship; and helped my “boss” get ready for a meeting he has today (Wednesday) with TJ Maxx. I The week is not over and I’m already happy with the outcome. Below is a shot from the weekend shoot with New Standard Edition and Trendcue.

WEEK 10 (Spring Break)

So this week is “Spring Break,” but not for me because `I have a ton of work to do. I’ve realized that maybe I’ve taken on a bit too much this semester; taking Design Team (with should be easy), along with Internship and 2D Animation 2; Oh and let me not forget Art History (That’s still easy). Accepting an internship that takes up entirely too much of my time was a bad decision, but I wanted that particular internship. I’d rather do just the internship than being in school full-time with these other classes that occupy my time as well; I don’t need the rest of these classes so it just feels like a waste.

So yeah, “Spring Break,” like that is even a thing anymore for me, even outside of school, which takes up 7 days of my week, I still need to somehow find time to do things I actually enjoy whole-heartedly. I don’t enjoy “school,” but I do like my internship, but it’s unpaid. I’m an adult that;’s committing way too much time to unpaid work, that’s not good.

On a decent note, I did a photoshoot for my internship’s website this week, no days off. The shoot was about 5 hours and it was fun. My second studio shoot, both being this year. Here’s a shot from the shoot.

WEEK 11 (Back to Business)

Ironic, I call it back to business like I ever had a break. So last week, I got a good amount of animation work done, my animated commercial; I’m still behind in school though because of my internship hours. Design Team is now even more of a useless class to me, It’s like charity work for companies. I don’t have time to donate anymore of my time to charity work, I already don’t get paid for anything that occupies most of my time. One more semester and I’m done with school, can it come any faster?

This past Sunday, I did allocate some time to actually doing something I wanted to do, a photoshoot of sorts, another instameet. I met some more people and took a bunch of photos of the model I took with me. It was definitely a fun day, but with every pleasure comes a drawback…now I have a bunch photos I have to edit.

WEEK 12 (My “Design” Process)

My internship is not as design heavy as a standard design internship would be. I working for a clothing brand as a Social Media Director/ Strategist. My job was/is technically rebranding the companies social media presence but through photos and video sharing. My focus on Instagram gave me a narrow window to work with, and the hawkeyes of the brand owner/ my internship boss kept me from really changing a bunch. The way I had to work was planning what would be posted each day, 7 days a week. With each post, the main goal is engagement, I had to share something that would engage the people that see it on Instagram. The next step would be building the audience through the posts; through the engagement, hopefully, we see growth in a following. The last step is sales, one of my jobs was to post things that would want to make people click on the website link and buy something.

I had to do all of this with social media, and that’s based on the audience that the business is targeted to (25 – 35-year-olds). ith the help of Instagram analytics, I was able to see the days’ post could get the most engagement, the hours of the day engagement would peak, the age groups that are mostly involved with engagement on the page, and the geological areas that had the Instagram reaches. The biggest problem with Instagram is that engagement is sporadic; Certain types of posts can do very well and very bad, even if they’re the same type of post.

Adding on to the Instagram analytics, I must keep track of the gained and lost followers, try to figure out why they unfollowed or followed. What was the post of the day these people followed or unfollowed. Then I tally the like, per day; which day averages the most engagement/likes.

After getting all of that information in order, I must look for sources to help engagement, this being bloggers or celebrities that can help out. The catch it, there’s no monetary gain for them (technically), just help us out by us sending you some clothing and you shouting us out. I have had success with the one person I have reached out to so far, by that didn’t result in any sales. So my job on social ties into marketing, which is also what I am partially in charge for. Anything marketing is run by me, and I have to determine whether it would be good for the business exposure or not. So my job is not a traditional design occupation, more so marketing; there is steps that I have to take to prepare, but the results are not clear, it’s a chance thing.

WEEK 13

I have a busy few weeks ahead of me, Finals coming along with a couple presentations; school is taking up too much of my time for sure. Positive thing, I reached my internship hours, so I can take a break actually going to the office for a change. Still, no time for anything, and the amount of animation work I have to do, I for sure am not going to complete everything.

WEEK 14

Semester in nearly over so now all of these photography meets are taking place…why can’t they wait just a few more weeks! I know I shouldn’t be attending any but I have to at least attend one of them this week. A breath of fresh air, one day, that’s what I really need.

The weekend was dope, meet was more like a hangout, but I did get a few dope photos of new faces. I have to get back to all this work so I won’t be able to edit until the semester is over. I’ll edit a few photos so I can have something for my blog.

WEEK 15

I had another little shoot for my internship last week, putting in a little extra time. Final week of semester work, I have a bunch of work to finish! That leisure time this past weekend may not have been a smart idea. I can’t wait until next week, I get to do whatever I want to do, no school work. I might end up doing the internship presentation next week instead of this week, that Unicef presentation has to be finished. And 2D, ugh, I need to do at least part of that last project to pass, so much work for no reason, I can’t even do it to the best of my ability. I hate (yes, hate) doing things when I can’t put at least 70 percent effort into it, so I’m not enjoying school at all. I put a picture from that I took during this weekend’s leisure time with my friend Kelly.