This week was not busy, since my supervisor had construction going on in the office to replace the window frames. Something new I had to do was that, since my supervisor was busy with clients, I had to pick up the phone and speak with customer and get their billing information. Which at first was nerve-wracking for me and I was hesitant to answer, because the construction noises were very loud, and I was afraid I wouldn’t hear the voice of the person, but when I picked up the call it was quite easy and I went to another location; I thought that I could do more with that and now can return voicemails and schedule appointments if needed. On Wednesday, mostly I tried to find emails that went to junk mail and see if any emails from the website would be legitimate and I found a few, which were sent months ago, so I had to write them back and ask for information so that we could set up an interview appointment. On Monday, I answered a couple of emails as per usual and emailed our printer about new e cards to be made. With appointments coming up, I was asked to find application forms and give them out to the new clients. Also this week, there was something new happening, when my supervisor went for the photo shoot on location, I was left alone with deleting some pictures from way before and finding photos clients have approved to go on the e card, but someone came without an appointment and asked for representation in this business. Then, I texted my supervisor and asked if she would see them that day, but she had other appointments and asked me to get their information. Later, we emailed her back to set up a meeting to talk about how this business works and what she needs to do to get started. Overall, this week was easygoing and not that demanding, and with construction going on, I didn’t get a chance to participate as much.

Monday, March 18^th, concludes my seventh week working at MoArtDeLand. This was the week I returned after break. This week was very fun as I assisted in the closing of the Sandy Winters show over at the Downtown Museum location. I helped with the Condition Reports for various pieces before they were taken down and repacked for shipment to their next exhibit location. Condition reports are very important records for an artist and museum professionals. They are used to keep track of the changing physical condition of artworks and their attendant structures (frames, mounting structure). For the museums purposes they are pretty much a safeguard against liability for damaged work. This damage could be caused by things like gallery temperature and humidity or harm during the shipping process. This was a nice lesson to have as I am also learning about environment conditions in gallery spaces within my Collection Management class.

This week I worked only on Monday, and it was an easy work day. I helped my supervisor with answering emails and Instagram messages. The day started off by my supervisor, her client and me sitting at the computer and looking over the photo shoot pictures together. Supervisor had a view appointment, which means that a client comes over to look at the photos taken at the locations and picks her favorites for the comp cards, while we also can Photoshop them on the spot and edit them to the person’s liking. I got to sit and observe this process and learn a few things, for example, of how one should communicate with client and satisfy their needs, so that they will be happy with our services. I also learned from the past weeks on how to build a relationship with clients, so that they will refer us to their friends. My supervisor also asked the client if she wanted some pictures to be sent to her email, so that she can use them for herself in Instagram or etc. Usually, we give out a CD of photos to every client, but if the customer desires to have them emailed to her, we could do that as well.  After this appointment, I was sending out emails to our printer, so that he could print the comp cards or edit them if the client wanted extra editing on the cards or if there were any mistakes made on the name or etc. Believe it or not, that happens quite often; we send out information on the person with their height and size, etc.; and then when the printer sends us a copy of the e-card, we send it directly to the client for their approval, and sometimes it would have mistakes in the size or other information, and then we would have to contact the printer again and tell him to fix the issues; then we send the fixed card back to the client and wait for approval, before we could print them. There is a lot of back and forth communication happening in this business. I finished my day by sending out an email to a list of clients from the previous months; this email is what we call a “friendly” email, which means that its content is about getting back to the models, asking how they are doing, and say if we have any opportunities soon or any jobs coming up in the future.

Friday, March 1st, I completed my sixth week of working at MoArtDeland. This was a shorter week of working with break the following week. Just because it was a shorter working week doesn’t mean I was any less busy. This week I worked in-depth on learning about the upcoming show featuring black and white film photographer Gary Monroe. Gary Monroe’s images provide a glimpse into the lives of the people he photographs. Monroe’s images provide a glimpse into a number of communities that add to the character of Florida and other localities. His images vary from the old world Jewish community that characterized South Beach Miami, to Haitian resettlement camps, to tourists visiting Disney World, and the various landscapes that these cities and communities are built upon. These visual stories focus on specific populations, examining their daily experiences and the challenges that they face. Learning about Monroe’s work will help me understand the fashion in which the images will be displayed within the gallery during showcase. This knowledge is allowing me to get insight on curatorial thinking when setting up an exhibition.

This week, I got to work twice and got to participate in the photo-shoot again. These working days were quite busy for me. On Monday, I helped with answering emails and sending out billing information to the accounting department. On Wednesday, I started out with helping my supervisor with getting back to the clients by writing to them and answering any questions they might have had, and then I went to the photo-shoot locations and held the reflector for better lighting, so that the pictures would come out looking brighter and sunnier, since this is Florida and pictures have to show tropical, warm weather; Also, it was very chilly and windy that day, and I was freezing at times, my hands for shaking and that was a challenge for me to hold this gigantic reflector in a specific direction so that I could reflect the sunlight onto the model’s face. At the end of the day, I was using paper trimmer again and cut out white spaces around the printed portfolio photos. My supervisor had told me, that I am going to do another project, probably starting next week. It will be something that is related to my first project and involves excel and is a basically a paperwork assignment. I am enjoying this internship experience and I like that I always have something to do. I am already half way through this semester, and hope that I would get to work on the web design soon. Even though I am new at this, I feel like I could contribute and improve the overall look and style of the website and make it more user friendly.

After the previous super busy week it was nice to slow back down so I could study for my upcoming midterms. My supervisor got back to me after I submitted those cutouts I did for the men’s basketball team. He said the headshots were really good and asked me to continue doing them for the broadcast team! That week I proceeded to do cutouts for all of the women’s lacrosse team and the men’s baseball team – 67 headshots in total. I’m used to doing work in Photoshop but I had never done so many at one time so the experience really helped me streamline my process within Photoshop.  On Wednesday we had a double header for both men’s and women’s basketball. For the first game, I attended my usual position as graphics operator but we changed it open for the open of the second game which was pretty cool. They let me work as the Technical Director! The Technical Director’s job is to basically cut between live shots on the Director’s cue. The TD is the one controlling all of the transitions during the game and switching into the replay system if necessary. It was a lot of fun trying out a different position but also pretty humbling. I forget sometimes just how much goes into the process of airing a single game and how much responsibility goes into each broadcast member. Everyone does a really great job and I’m proud to be a part of our broadcast. Hopefully as the semester goes by I’ll be able to branch out a bit more and try a few more positions.

After having our weekly conference call on Friday, I was assigned to make even more graphics. They shared a document with me that has a bunch of different categories they want, and then under each category, they have quotes for me to include in these graphics. It’s a similar assignment to last week however, I don’t need to invert the colors on this one so if they want ten graphics they only need ten rather than twenty which is nice. I’ve had some issues with the folders them sharing with me being empty when they are supposed to have content in them that they want me to include, but after reaching out we usually get that sorted out pretty quickly. I have not made any of these quotes as I’m still waiting for one specific folder to be shared with me so I won’t have those to share with you until next week. However, the poster that I had mentioned from last week I currently have a rough draft to share. We’re still working on all the details so it’s rather blank but it is attached below. After reaching out to Heather and communicating that I felt like I was being left in the dark at times she has become much more responsive to emails and calls so I’m glad I finally reached out to her in regards to that as that was the main issue that I was having. For now, though all I have to show is this poster as previously mentioned, next week I will have different poster ideas as well as social media graphics to share with you so stay tuned for those!

Today, February 25th, I finished my fifth week at the Museum of Art DeLand. This past week I worked on some more press release drafts for some upcoming exhibitions. I used the press releases issued by the Museum on the website as guidance. I also used the essays from the Museum’s CEO that he completed about each of the artists and these particular exhibitions as a reference. I had to pull out two quotes from the CEO’s essays that could stand alone in the press releases to describe the show and the art.  These writing assignments have given me insight into the ways museums market themselves through texts. An important component of museum press releases is the extent in which they are able to engage with the surrounding community.

Writing press releases for exhibitions is an essential task at the Museum of Art DeLand as they serve as the first introduction to the show for the public, artists, and press. Maintaining and increasing visitors is also another role these press releases have. The Museum depends on a steady stream of people coming to the exhibitions and opening receptions. Without a good attendance the works just collect dust and can’t provide any educational benefit to the DeLand community. I have learned through these assignments that press releases like the ones I am drafting have a major effect on whether people visit, review, and purchase items from the Museums locations.

During this week, I worked two days, instead of the regular one day a week schedule. I turned in my project and my supervisor told me that the printed version of the excel assignment was good, but it could use some improvement, and gave me another week to figure out how to space the cells out better, so that they print well. As per usual, I had my daily tasks and helped with answering messages and writing to new clients. On Monday, I got to see the whole process of preparing for photography session of new clients for the comp cards. I also took pictures of billing information of clients for their photo shoot and comp cards that I had to send to the accounting department. This week, I also had lots of filing to do and I am pretty good at it, since on my previous job, I had good practice of doing that. Something new that happened to me this week, was that I had to walk three blocks to pick up the portfolio photos from a printing company; it was a sunny day and I enjoyed my walk and got to see the downtown area, which was pretty cool, since I haven’t been to that part of the city before. I got to work on portfolios, construct them and cut out the white, blank spaces with paper trimmer. Besides this new task, this week was not as busy as before and I did not have any new projects for me to do. Hopefully, next week I could start working on something new and get a new experience in this industry. So far, I liked that my tasks were structured and I knew what to do every time, especially when I am finished with previous tasks.