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Athens 2017 Reflected – Being A Photographer (Part 2/3)
Athens 2017
I have worked at SideOut’s annual beach volleyball camp for the past five years – in Rhodes 2013 (blog, video), 2014 (blog, video) and 2015 (video) then in Athens 2016 (video) and 2017 (video). Athens 2017 was fun but a lot of work! It was probably the hardest camp since the very first one back in Rhodes 2013. To find out if it actually was one of the hardest camps, I looked back at my blog to see what I wrote about my previous camps. I was surprised to find that my last reflection on this annual beach volleyball camp was back in Rhodes 2014. I had skipped the past two years! So to amend this, I will reflect on this year’s camp while taking into consideration the past two camps.
I will break down this reflection in three parts as relates to my three roles at the camp: 1. Being a Performance Analyst 2. Being a Photographer 3. Being a Videographer
Being a Photographer Reflected
This was never a part of my job description but when SideOut saw I took so many photos in my first year, it has been always been an unofficial part of my role. This year was was made official as I was charged with uploading daily photos for SideOut.
. Upon a suggestion of a player, I offered to do the job of uploading daily photos. I felt it gave a sense of excitement to the players and being in the moment (or in this case, being in yesterday’s moment). The process was:
1. Look through all the photos to pick the best ones – there could be several hundreds of photos to look through and you probably deleted about 75% of them. 2. Edit the best photos if needed – this generally means cropping them. 3. Add a watermark to those photos using uMark 6 (read below). 4. Upload the edited photos to Facebook. 5. Tag those photos so more people know it’s there and it gets a bigger reach.
Although the official photographer did much of the work in steps 1 and 2, it was still time consuming work to upload his and my photos on a daily basis.
I always hate when I upload photos, people was just download them and repost it for themselves without credit. I have seen other photographers on Facebook put their own logo on their photos. I thought I would do the same. I googled a watermark software program and I eventually landed on uMark 6. It’s simple to use and it does the job. It does have some restrictions as a free program , although you can upgrade to a pro version though. One restriction is you can only watermark 50 photos at a time. If you have more than 50 photos then you have to go through the process again. It’s a bit annoying as it adds another 5-10 minutes to your day. I’m glad I have watermarked the photos because now I have seen players reposting those photos for themselves and I can see those beautiful watermarks. Some players would crop them but you generally see a part of the watermark.
When I first saw the official photographer’s photos, you can see the difference between mine and his style of photo, i.e. his photos looked a lot better than mine! Because of this, we decided that we would use his photos for SideOut’s Facebook page only and mine for my own profile. I would just make mine public so everybody can see. In terms of watermark, I used the Athens 2017 logo for SideOut and for mine, I used thevolleyballanalyst social media watermark in addition to the Athens 2017 logo.
I posted my photos on my profile. However, I felt these photos are in an official capacity and that maybe I should have posted them on thevolleyballanalyst Facebook page. Then I could just share the photos on my profile. This would also help me get some more likes for . This is something to think about.
Like I said, this is simple work but it would take about two hours to complete the daily task. It may not sound a lot but my day is already full as the camp’s performance analyst, videographer and photographer (minus the daily photos). To fit it in, I did in the morning when I woke up, before I went to sleep and bits during the day. It basically took away much of the limited free time I had, time which I like to use to social and have a bit of fun. In hindsight, I think this was one thing too much.
Overall Reflection
I like taking photos and having those photos watermarked is a good idea. However, the job of uploading photos every day was one thing too much. I felt this was the sole reason why I felt this was such a tough camp. Something would need to change for next year. It could be that I don’t upload my photos on a daily basis. Choosing the photos and editing them takes the bulk of the time. However, since the official photographer does most of that for you, uploading his photos for the SideOut Facebook page may only take 30-45 minutes. That I can fit in my day. I would just upload my photos after the camp.
Read all three parts: 1. Being a Performance Analyst 2. Being a Photographer 3. Being a Videographer
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