The Brief

The brief I was given for this module was to undertake at least 60 hours of work experience as a way to evidence, and explore how my employability skills, knowledge and attributes have been enhanced.

The Tasks PSA Gave Me

For the events I was at, I was given a typical brief for a tournament, which included:

• Capture all of the matches
• At least 10 photos of each match during the first, second and third rounds and at least 30 photos for the rest
• Make sure that they are not all from the same angle
• Get Behind-the-scene photos
• This includes players warming up and other things
• Photograph the general View of the court
• Get photos of the trophies on the court
• All trophies, Women's winner and Runners up, Men's winner and Runners up, Both Winner players and both winner trophies separately
• Capture the trophy Ceremony
• All four finalists, Women's winner and Runners up, Men's winner and Runners up, Both Winner Players and both winner trophies separately
• All sponsors together

My Reflection on my work

For my Professional Experience Module, I submitted my work from two squash tournaments (Ace Malaysia Squash Cup and Vitagen Singapore Open). During these two weeks, I learned a lot of new things and found something challenging. One of the things I found challenging was keeping on top of the workload. As matches were happening all the time and I had to find time to edit the photos and send them to the social media team, I had to rush around, meaning I could not edit the images to the best of my ability. However, after researching how to speed up my editing, I started using presets and choosing which photos I uploaded into Lightroom Classic before uploading them. This significantly reduced the time I spent waiting for the pictures to upload. 

However, the photos exceeded my employer's expectations, and they looked excellent. I managed to keep up with all the matches. On some days, I would have to capture 32 games a day, which, according to my employers, would be a challenging task, as I have not photographed many tournaments so far. On top of this, across my two weeks, I have built a fantastic rapport with the media, broadcasting teams, and many of the players. 

I had a slight hiccup during the trophy ceremony, as I am not very good at telling people what to do regarding staged photos. In addition, during the trophy ceremony, I was barged out of the way a lot and then shouted at while photographing as I was allegedly getting in the way, despite my being the lead photographer for the tournament. This was quite a challenging moment in the 2 weeks, but after this, I didn’t want to be affected, so I got on with the rest of it, and then for the second tournament, I photographed it perfectly and got all the photos I needed with no mess-ups. 

One aim of mine was to connect with the other members of the team. I feel like I did this quite well, as I connected with them beforehand and figured out what they wanted me to be doing during the events. At the events, I bonded with them very well and ended up spending a lot of time with the team by eating meals with them and sightseeing with them whenever I had the chance. This has built a very good rapport with them, and at later tournaments, it has been a lot easier to communicate with them and be able to bring up anything I am having trouble with. 

Thank you for reading my experience over the last year and how I have become a developed photographer in such a difficult sport. I have really enjoyed doing this over the last year. Thank you to everyone who has helped me make it to this stage in my career. I hope you enjoyed the photos and getting to know my path in this field.