Taking initiatives at Convex!
From the beginning of this academic year i.e. 2016-17, I was appointed as the head of the photography club of our college, Convex.
The first semester in college from June-Dec, I was a bit busy with the masters' application process and few examinations. And hence I have just done the things which has to be done. But as now I am a bit free, I took a few initiatives apart from regular covering of events happening in the college.
1. One-to-one mentoring:
First, let me give you some numbers before coming to my point. We usually have more than 15 big size event of more than a day in our college throughout the year. And every event organiser/lead wants good photos of that event. As of now, we have only 10 experienced photographers in our club. Now, the main issue is, apart from being a photographer, everyone has their own personal life and priorities. So one person or a group of person can't cover all the events. Here comes the crucial question of man-power management.
So, what I've planned is, in every event, send a couple of experienced photographers and a few freshers. Now, this ensures the decent quality of photographs of events as well as simultaneously running teaching sessions for juniors. This will bring the seniors-juniors closer as well.
Now, the main thing is reviewing the photos and teach them a few new things before and after the events. This bring me to think of something called "One-to-one mentoring plan." I made a group of 4 juniors and assign them an experienced senior who teach them the basics he knows. They have to sit for twice in a week for an hour long. And after a week the mentor/senior rotates between the group. This created at least bottom-level event photographer with proper understanding in just no time. This also reduced the burden on senior photographers as well.
2. Give incentives to the photographers to cover the events:
Till date there were no incentives for the photographers to cover the events; so there were very less folks interested to do the same. I thought of giving free memory cards of 8GB, 16GB and even 32GB for every event to the photographers who all cover the event. This actually made sure that they work hard enough. As far as the budget was concerned, everybody needs us (photography team) to be present at the venue to click. So, they won't mind giving us small amount of budget for that.
3. Make centralised database for all the photos:
Stats: Every event cost whole club almost 40 GB of space to store the photos clicked. Now, this type of events used to be of a day long or max of two. But, the annual events of the departments or say whole college (annual technical festival, annual cultural festival, etc.) need 100-300GBs of data. Any single person can't manage this data in his/her personal machines.
And folks from magazine club and else used to ask us guys for photos of a year back and sometimes even two years old. So, there was indeed a need of a centralised hard-drive of at least 1TB dedicated to the past photos only. And, we bought this thing for smooth data-keeping!
4. Two faces of the club:
Last year, in the selection process of the head for the upcoming year, I was involved. What we (I and the past head) thought that we can have two faces of the club for better governance. I along with one girl were given a chance to lead the club for a year. And that was the perfect decision according to me.
She handles all the public relations and I, internal affairs. I was good with all the members, whereas she was well-known in the college. So, that was the perfect gamble to make two heads first time and it went very well.
