(Written last weekend) On Monday I'm flying back to Aotearoa to spend 3.5 weeks filling in at the newspaper I started out with, The Marlborough Express. I left the job there 4 years ago to go overseas with my (ex)boyfriend Fernando. It was all very exciting at the time; my first big overseas trip, incorporating Thailand, London, and onto Brazil. Fernando is Brazilian and the plan was for him to return to his home country so he could study, and I would work teaching English (of course!). I was very naieve about it all, thinking I was leaving my dreary home town for good, daydreaming about a little shack on the beach and drinking cocktails in a hammock. I was in for the biggest culture shock of my life, and a very real wake up call in regards to being more careful with finances! Needless to say within 5 months I was back in NZ having agreed to return to a job at The Timaru Herald.
The job at The Marlborough Express came about when I'd returned from Wellington where I had studied the Diploma in Photography at Massey University for the past 2 years. I'd hardly given a thought to where I was going to live, let alone the practical reality of needing to find work once I left. I found myself back in Blenheim feeling rather shell-shocked after a busy year and a dose of back-to-reality. I knew the chief photographer and I kept bumping into him and he kept telling me about how badly they needed a part-timer. I didn't follow up on this immediately, being initially a little daunted, and, to be honest, I suffered from a 'distaste' for news photography which I'd picked up from my self-proclaimed 'art photographer' friends at university.
Despite myself, I rang the Editor and was asked to submit a portfolio and CV for the full-time job that was being advertised at the time also. Having done so I was taken on part-time which was actually full-time for the first 4 weeks as they waited on the arrival of the new full-timer. I was thrown in the deep end and it was a great learning curve for me. I suddenly realised that I DIDN'T know it all, in fact I knew very little about photography! Particulary in the arenas of posing people, sport, and using flash! My ego was deflated very quickly and I fumbled and stumbled my way through learning the art of photojournalism.
Photojournalism is a word I still hesitate to use as the job really is cheesy posed photos or sports most of the time. As most of the worlds newspapers are turning away from the obviously posed in-your-face type of photograh, small town NZ papers still love it and hang on to it dearly. But hey, what else can you do when the story is weak and the visual options to illustrate it 'naturally' are boring?!
After 9 months of part-time for the Marlborough Express I was offered a full-time position and continued in that role until Dec 2005. By the time I left I was thoroughly relieved that I wouldn't spend my weekends at cricket/soccer/rugby/tennis matches and downloading and captioning late into Sunday night. I had become as cynical and disillusioned as... as most journalists ;)
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