Cambridge... My city of heart-ache & not the best weekend to be a photographer.

Most university photography graduates will probably agree with me, that life after university can be pretty much of a challenge. Myself, I am still struggling to get into the industry (I have the qualifications but not the experience... Industry are not willing to give me the experience so I feel like I am going round in circles!) so whilst I am trying to stay in high spirits with my practices, I am in a job that is non-related to my degree just so I can keep some form of money coming in to support myself and put money towards my equipment. This weekend, has been possibly the worst so far for me as a photographer.

On 29th October, Cambridge saw it's first ever International Tattoo Convention which was being held at the Hilton Center. Here I am, with my camera and lens bag ready and raring to go. With speaking to one of the organizers through Facebook, we had exchanged numbers, I had kindly offered to do some photography as a volunteer so I could work on my portfolio / artist C.V and agreed to be at the event at 10am. As you can imagine, I was super-stoked to be taking part and actually getting to work with my camera. I got up early to commute in from King's Lynn and despite my train being delayed I made sure to keep in contact with the organizer so he knew where I was and what I was doing. I got to the event at 10.05... I called said organizer 4 times and got no reply. I left messages saying if he could meet me to tell me where I should be going etc, so after 15/20 minutes I decided to follow all the heavenly tattoo'd crowd that was having a quick smoke and finally found where the event was being held. Waiting in line, there was a photographer from the Cambridge News in-front of me and we got chatting as photographers do. It was our turn to say hi to whoever the chap was on the ticket desk, and without being greeted I was given a gold wrist band and told to make my way inside. Once in, Mr Cambridge News disappeared after telling me his mission for the day and I set myself to getting my bearings to where all the different sections were. I still wanted to introduce myself to one of the organizers, just to remain professional and to ask if there was anything specific they wanted shooting for the day and to double check with regards to taking pictures of tattoo artists working on their customers (I didn't want to get myself in trouble for legal reasons!). Spoke to a member of the crew, he said to wait a coupe of minutes and somebody would be along to see me... And so I waited... 30 minutes! As every minute was passing I was growing more impatient, so for the last time I called said organizer, he answered the phone, mumbled some mumbo-jumbo about him being busy and then hung up on me. After being taken for a fool, I walked away, rather upset and pretty miffed off. Cambridge is a city that I hold close to me for numerous sentimental reasons, relationships in particular and as i walked round the shopping center and found my way to The Eagle, I sat with a beverage thinking about the scenarios that have happened to me in the past and within the last 2 hours of that day. Being shunned to the side was very heart-breaking for a young individual like me, I tried so hard to get this little experience opportunity (being told no first time round) and was generally in low spirits. After talking to a friend of mine who has more experience than me and completely understood what I was going through, she said something that was really made me take a step back of the outcome of the day (Thanks Fran!) 'NEVER offer to work for free. You are a photography graduate and too good at what you do, you WILL be exploited.' And she was right! I am bloody good at what I do and I don't want to loose confidence in what happened on that day. I have learnt two things from this... 1) That volunteering for something like this is all well and good to expand on your portfolio but to anybody thinking of doing the same, please PLEASE make sure both parties are well organised and you know what to expect on the day! 2) Expect something drastic like being made non-existent and unimportant. But try not to let it get to you and make your spirits low. Take it as a learning curve and something to work on into making you a more confident individual. After all, J K Rowling got rejected 12 times with her novel Harry Potter and the Philosophers Stone until she found a company that wanted to publish her book... I'm just going to leave this quote here. "Failure taught me things about myself that I could have learned no other way. I discovered that I had a strong will, and more disciplined than I had suspected." - J K Rowling.