My week of work experience

I have spent the last week at Culture24 which has been a very interesting because I have had no experience with journalism at all and it’s allowed me to see what working in journalism is like. Culture24 are a charity that collects, organizes and distributes information from and about museums, galleries and other organizations.

The first day I was spent helping them test the beta version of their mobile website which was exciting because that kind of thing has interested me for a while. After I had finished that I helped them out by going onto venue’s websites to see what events they have on.

Tuesday I created a post for their Museums at Night blog. Museums at Night is a yearly event where museums, galleries, libraries and many more places stay open late and hold special evening events. Insert example

After every year they get sent a load of pictures from the events but because the images are from the public most of them are the generic back of the head shot or the very harshly lit flash shot. My job was to create a blog post about how best to take photographs during Museums at Night - accompanied by images taken at the Brighton Museum and Art Gallery. The purpose of the post is to point out the common problems and illustrate them with my pictures and then give solutions to help create better images also adding more images to illustrate that.

Wednesday I was shown how to add an event to the database and just helped out with that which was a fascinating insight into how everything worked.

Thursday was my trip up to the British Library to see the Illuminated Manuscripts exhibition which was a very interesting trip and has made me want to spend a day there getting a proper look at the library. Once back I started on writing up a blog post about the trip and getting my thoughts down.

And today was spent finishing off the blog post and learning more about what the editorial team does.

Overall this work placement has given me a insight into how companies like this work and has given me a real thirst for pursuing my own career in photojournalism.  

I would just like to say a big thank you to everyone in the Culture24 team for making me feel so welcome and just being a nice bunch of people! :)

The British Library.

For part of my course at college I need to work placements and my first has been with Culture24. Yesterday I was able to go up to London for a press viewing of the new exhibition that is being opened to the public tomorrow with is the Royal Illuminated Manuscript at the British Library

The British Library has always been somewehre I had wanted to visit due to the fact that they have the original handwritten manuscript of Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll. Unfortunately by the time we got there and found out that the library would be closing at 2 because the Queen, accompanied by the Duke of Edinburgh, would be officially opening the exhibition we didn't have any extra time to look around. :(

First impressions of the exhibiton: It had an amazing atmosphere. The way that they had done the walls by transitioning from a dark blue at the end to red at the start of the exhibition helped create a very relaxed atmosphere. Another thing that struck me was how many books there were and hold old they were, it was amazing to see 154 books, which are dated between the 9th and16th century.

Personally history isn't something im very interested in so I didn't really focus on the history of the books, I looked more at the illustrations and how beautiful they were after all this time. Taking a quick glance rounf you automaically notice how bright and vibrant the colours are and especially the use of gold leaf within them.

I think my favourite in the whole exhibition is the wedding present for Margaret of Anjou and Henry VI because of how intricate and beautifully done it is, the amount of work that must have had to have gone into that is amazing.

The book is made up of fifteen bits of text in French but I loved it more for its two brilliant illustrations. My favourite was the one that illustrates the claim that Henry VI is the rightful king of France.When I first saw it I fell in love straight away and couldn't stop looking at it. It just amazed me how much work went into presents for the royals and how much people used to adore them compared to modern days.

Overall it was an intesting trip and I will definitely be going back up there to see Alice as well as a late night event they are doing next year. :)