About three months ago, I made the decision to look for an internship somehow relating to photography. I had taken a couple classes in college and I had discovered there was a lot more that I wanted to know about this field, and two classes in college simply could not suffice. Thus began my long and tedious process of scouring the internet, craigslist mostly, looking for that perfect internship.

I quickly realized that, although there were numerous photography related internships out there, none of them were really what I was looking for. I learned that many companies, as a result of the economic crisis, had taken what once were entry-level positions and turned them into un-paid “internship opportunities”. At first glance this might sound like a wonderful opportunity to work with prestigious companies that maybe weren’t hiring interns before. The catch, however, is that they are not looking to teach you, work with you, or even hire you, they expect you to come in and work for them for free.

My problem with this is that an internship is supposed to focus on teaching the intern, not demand of the intern to already have full and working knowledge of the field. By definition an intern is “a student undergoing supervised practical training”. So why are so many companies getting away with this?

Needless to say I was shocked by all of the internships available that had lost sight of what an internship is supposed to be. One in particular called for a photography intern, here’s the catch, you’re not going to be working with a photographer, you would be working for a jewelry designer who simply wants free photographs taken.

After a month of searching the internet, when things seemed pretty hopeless, an ad on craigslist came up. Finally, the perfect internship, which even had written in the ad, “Unlike many internships, we teach you – you’re not treated as a free employee, we have weekly “instructional discussions” and always try to teach you something.” I knew immediately I had to get this internship.

Now a little over a month after I first began at KMR, the ad still holds true to its word. I have never learned so much while at the same time being given so much responsibility. I feel comfortable here; I always know that there is no such thing as a stupid question.

So I second Ernesto in saying, Thank you Kevin; thank you for not being like everyone else and for staying true to what an internship is supposed to be, you are a rare find.

– Lauren, the intern

And boy do my interns spoil me. I'm glad you're learning something Lauren and glad you feel that I've stayed true to my word - though, sometimes it's tough to actually teach when the studio gets hectic! Thank you for all you do!

And, by the way, to the readers, my interns are not instructed to suck up to me, or even say nice things. They have free reign in their blog. I usually add these notes after they're already published.



KMR


About the author

Related Posts