651: All I got was a bit of knowledge and some free pens.

Yesterday, I attended an NUJ training workshop at NUJ headquarters. It was pretty swell, I got to see a lot of the faces from the NUJ Delegate Meeting and we spent the day learning about how to go about establishing chapels within universities and the workplace, something that may come in useful on this upcoming placement.

I really need to sort out renewing my membership, I will do this as soon as my (probably) last instalment on JSA comes in - wow this post is just full of acronyms.
I found the whole day really useful, I'm now considering further workshops that the NUJ offer, particularly relating to CVs and interviews but we'll see how my life is going once this internship starts. I am hoping that I can forward on all this information to my past tutor in order to establish a chapel within Portsmouth university, I would really like her to take me up on the offer, and I can give her so many free pens.





The press card is just one of the many benefits of being a member of the National Union of Journalists, you also get to go to things like this and meet lots of really nice people. As well as sharing knowledge and making friends, you sometimes get lucky and get free USBs and a drink at the end of the day.

Ballerina 54 Lighting Shoot.

.:Continued from below:.These are the images relevant to the lighting workshop shoot, they are basically test shots for what we were going to take on the 54's, although, some of these contribute to what could be considered our final images for this session.
With the digital cameras, the Bowen lights were working as slave lights so we got lighting from both flash lights. I got to use my Speedlight for this, which made me quite pleased, I've really been getting my money's worth with it recently.
Images that Abbie took with my camera as well as more images showing the 'production' can be found in this Facebook album.

© Ruth Johnston 2009

A funny story to go along with the shoot is that the roof of the theatre leaked half-way through - thought it was pretty poignant considering the problems I've been having - couldn't help laughing. It even leaked around the same amount, but from a much great height, can't believe how big the puddle was.

New Theatre Royal Dressing Rooms.

My course mate Abbie got us into the New Theatre Royal on Guildhall Walk for a lighting workshop session. The lighting workshops are just one of those annoying aspects within the Portsmouth University course that are necessary to make you learn but nearly always irrelevant to what you're concentrating on at the time.
I do actually feel as though I learned something today though.
Not only did Abbie get us into the venue - which was an amazing location - she also got us a model - her housemate, who happened to be a ballerina (for fun). She was a great model, and because of the setting, I feel it made for quite an interesting shoot. We were shooting digital as well as on the 54 Large Format Cameras - which despite their clunky appearance, were pretty easy to use - although setting up took a while, we took six images in the end.
This is something I'd happily do again, it was much more interesting than sitting and watching Daniel do something and having to take notes.

There was a lot of waiting around to do so we went exploring and found the dressing rooms - which also would have been a great place to photograph in.
The theatre feels so grand when you walk in, but being honest, the dressing rooms do leave a lot to be desired. They're pretty bleak - although saying that I'm not even entirely sure what kind of productions NTR put on. These rooms were really neat in their own way though and were especially interesting to look at without any personal human presence.

© Ruth Johnston, 2009