Monday, January 18, 2010

Progress

A couple things:
One: I was sitting on a ledge against the tank glass in the Seas pavilion in Epcot (aka the aquarium) minding my own business and fiddling with my camera when I happened to slightly turn to look into the tank as a massive and playful dolphin swam ridiculously close to the glass. Hilariously and unfortunately, I screamed and threw my hands in the air... and I broke the screen on my camera. Yeahhhh the one I just bought 4 months ago. BUT, I took it to the Geek Squad at Best Buy and luckily I had purchased a warranty when I bought the camera so they're shipping it off to Canon to be fixed. (phew). Sad news: it might take three weeks to get it back. So, no more POTDs for a while. hahah. Dang the bad luck.

Two: My best CP friend ever, Lauren, just got approved to move out of her laaaaaame apartment in Patterson and switch to Chatham. I'm so excited. Now, we don't have to worry about checking her in after 9 PM or making her leave at 1:00 AM. You think you won't be up until 1 AM but it's now 6:45 AM and I'm about to get ready for work and I was definitely up until 2. haha. But I'm a bad prioritizer.

Three: Yesterday I got some training on the new Nikon D90s which are the cameras Disney is switching to in the coming weeks. They're brand new and I'm so thankful for that. The D70s we've been using are four years old and reach their "average yearly usage" and therefor wear and tear every few weeks. On a slow day at the entrance, I take about 600 pictures. Apparently once I get character trained, it'll be in the thousands. With Photopass, our training takes place in stages. First, you learn to shoot the major icon in your park and only in the daytime. You do that for a good week, then you get night trained and view trained. Night shots are always on tripods and they have different settings and focus points. The view is what we call our camera center and its basically training on how to use the viewing system in the parks, add borders and signatures, and print pictures. I'm not scheduled for view training yet but the other day they were short a couple of people so myself and Michael (another CP Photopasser in Epcot) were quickly trained on/thrown in to the view to help out. The system is easy to use but there are a lot of prices you have to remember. After that, I'll be character trained and be able to shoot character meet and greets. That's going to be a ton of fun. We get to take a bunch of candid shots and our pictures can be more creative. OH and another thing: all of the pictures that Photopass Photographers take get sent to a Quality Assurance team who look them over and make sure they turned out right before the guests can view them. There's an option on pictures to add tags and whatnot and two of my photos yesterday got tagged as especially good. Someone actually took the extra time to open my thumbnail and put in a tag to say I did a good job... twice. It was awesome.

I think thats it for now. Hopefully today goes by quickly and easily as I, probably mistakenly, got four hours of sleep. haha.

7 comments:

Ashlie said...

Yay for lack of sleep! At least you're at Disney...you could be in class :)!

Congrats on being so awesome at your job!

And sorry to hear about your camera. :(

Umm...see you tomorrow or the next day or the next day or the next day or next week???

John W. said...

While you are on your progra, keep an eye out at the CP events because I know that they have a really cheap scuba lesson that they provide and if you pass that then you can swim with the dolphins at the living seas.

Katie said...

Photopass sounds so awesome. I'm (not so) secretly jealous of you. :)

I'm also now very close to you. Yay Chatham!

I'm glad that you're already amazing at your job. Congratulations!

Will said...

That's cool that you'll be trained to photograph meet and greets. I always had the most fun photographing Mickey Mouse. If you can, you should try to pick up a shift at the Magic Kingdom and shoot the town square meet n greets. They are always slammed with people, but still fun.

Brittany Ann said...

I'm SOOOO glad you're loving it. I will definitely have to stalk this blog so I can feel like I'm there again. I had a blast during my program, and I know you will too. Tell the Mouse I said HI!

Unknown said...

Just popped in to say that your blog is really informative and I'll be bookmarking it! I had my phone interview for the Fall CP today, and I think I've got a good shot and being a PhotoPass photographer, so this is really helpful. :)

Marina said...

Hi Brittany!! I only wish we could have been here at the same time!

Deborah, I'm glad youre enjoying it! I know I need to update more haha but its sooo busy here. Let me know how the results of your interview turn out!!