The ups of hiring a wedding photography intern are obvious. I mean, who wouldn't want college students working in your studio for free? But there is so much more to it than that. This brief article will identify a list of things you might want to consider before starting an intern program.
First, a little background. We are wedding photographers in Grand Rapids, Michigan and have only had an intern program for five months. We have actually just hired our second intern though we have a third lined up to begin in the fall. However, despite its infancy, our intern program has been extremely rewarding and we believe it's because we didn't start one too early. We took the time to work through the following points which we believe have been critical to its success.
The first question we asked ourselves is if we were ready to have an intern. And for the longest time, our answer was no. The bottom line is that our goal was to build our own business and then have interns help us sustain it. For some time, we were so immersed as wedding photographers in Grand Rapids, Michigan that we didn't feel like we had our own act together when it came to our systems and workflow. Honestly, we were embarrassed at the thought of welcoming someone in to witness our chaos.
Which leads to the next consideration? What would we be passing on to our interns? Chaos? Or a good example of a well run photography studio? So we nailed down our products and vendors. We documented all of our systems and workflow and evaluated it for inefficiencies. And once we felt as if we knew what we were doing, we kept doing it over and over until we were confident that we had something that worked.
And that's when we brought in our first intern. She was a student at a university who was thinking about becoming a grand rapids wedding photographer. We clearly spelled out that we would not be teaching photography or editing, but that she would be implementing our workflow systems. As such, we benefited from freeing up time. And she would benefit from learning what wedding photography really involves.
One of the most important things that we have done in this process is to continually document our systems into a manual which literally spells out exactly how we do everything. This has been a tremendous resource for helping our intern remember how to do everything. But more importantly, it's the resource which will make it easier for our next grand rapids wedding photography intern.
Another consideration that we've wrestled through is the criteria for selecting our photography interns. And more specifically, the issue of how much experience they have. We recognize that anyone pursuing our internship will likely have some experience and may even have a website. But some of the intern candidates have actually been marketing themselves as professional wedding photographers, and that's where we drew the line. It just seemed odd for them to present themselves as professionals online and then to be interning for us by day. So we've chosen to hire interns who are considering a career as professional wedding photographers, but by no means consider themselves to be such already.
And one final consideration is what we do not have our interns do. For us, we've chosen that we will do all of our own shooting and editing. We encourage our wedding photography interns to become students of their own style and to learn to do that themselves. But what we do offer is a realistic perspective at what it really means to be a grand rapids wedding photographer so they can make an informed decision about pursuing it as a career.
I'm sure there will be many more lessons and considerations. But for now, these have been the most critical and the most helpful in developing our wedding photography internship program. I hope they will serve you as well as they have served us.
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