The final week was pretty chilled, Pokemon was the new dish of the day. So I spent a lot of time doing some rsearch on blogs and websites that have a particular interest in the Pokemon world. I didn’t mind doing this so much because it was for someone who had been really welcoming and had always found work for me to do, plus she really did need a hand on it.

This week after loads of nagging I managed to get an Interview with one of the MDs. A proper interview with a dictaphone and everything. It was very relaxed and she basically helped me fit the missing pieces of the puzzles into place. The non conforming attitude of Kazoo is essentially the way in which the company has evolved the fantastic media and journalistic relationships.

On friday my last day I was kept on my toes because some photos from the media football tournament from yesterday (the 13th May) needed to be sorted and then forwarded onto the various recipients. However I was told to sort out the wrong disc and when I found out I had barely an hour to sort out the photos intended seeing as the deadline was 3pm and it was 2pm at the time, I had my work cut out. So much for a chilled one. I’m glad this happened though because it gave me another chance to prove to my colleagues that I had been reliable and competent at my job, but also to prove to myself that I can cope in the industry even when Im put under pressure.

To top it off I was given a card from all the staff at Kazoo thanking me for my hard work (the first thank you card ever given to a work experince person). This was a really nice touch and was chuffed that I had that much of an impact. I think it goes without saying that if you have a happy relationship with your co-workers then the company on whole does better and I think Kazoos offices are a testament to that.

Went for a few drinkies to round off what has been a class experience that help me cut my teeth on a different side of the media but my final verdict would be: I prefer my side.

More than capable of doing this I set about working my way through the alaphabet and put the publications in their rightful place. To my horror the filing cabinets were more a war zone than a place of organised bliss. Months of old newspapers and magazines had been left in there taking up space and generally serving no purpose other than to irritate me. So I set the morning to clear out most of the old publications and getting back some order in the filing.

This week I managed to get senior account director Rose, to give me some insight on her view of Kazoo’s ethics, she felt that the cohesive workforce allowed her to feel safe and so she was able to trust and work well with her colleagues. She felt the Kazoo offices incubated a happy work environment.

On Friday I was set the task of ringing around men’s lifestyle magazines to ask them whether they would be interested in coming down to the Emirates stadium next thursday for a media football tournament. After each journalist I spoke to I became more and more irritated with myself for choosing a PR placement. The reason I’m doing a Journalism degree is to become a Journalist not to do PR. Plus they get invited to loads of cool events

Verdict: Become a Journalist.

One thing I would like to note on this particular incident however and I will talk about it more in the case study is time management. I mean clearly this was an important presentation (considering one of the Samsung clients flew in from Korea) but yet I was putting up this black out 30mins before the journalists came and first impression counted. In my opinion this is something I would have sorted at least the day before no?

The rest of the week was pretty samey nothing to challenging but pretty time consuming all the same. Researched blogs for Disney’s racing game Split Second. Like to note in Kazoo’s favour (as there was a lot of activity to do with journalists this week because of the samsung and a spilt second presentation with Shaun Wright Phillips demo going on) everyone from outside the company mentions whether it be on the phone or overheard in conversation really like working with the Company. Friendly, effecient and hard working are just some of the key words I noted down.

On Friday helped to write some giftcards to some celebrities and that was pretty much it. Being there for a month means i’ve become part of the furniture and settled in nicely. This will be the second time ill have been out on the Razz with the Kazoo lot.

Verdict: Waining enthusiasm for a career path that is not for me.

Its a belated post but here is the Work Experience diaries week by week……

Week 1, Thrown in at the deep end is the cliche i would like to use for this particular post. Excited to be starting work in a PR company right in the center of London really got the mind going. The commute, the lunch, the hustle and bustle all such a contrast to university and cornish life. Stepping onto the tube I was surrounded by people, people like me going to work all pressed tightly together on a common crusade. The journey takes about 30mins and so in no time I was in Oxford Circus weaving my way to the Kazoo offices. I stepped into the Monday morning office with a bang, after the initial hellos and I’m Jake on work experience, i was set up with my desk and laptop ready to start the day. Louise Greenaway account director for the company was my port of call for help and refrence during my time with Kazoo but because free labour is a invaluable resource to come by I never really needed to speak to her. I was set some Coverage work for the Samsung account.

Coverage boarding is essentially presenting to your clients (in this case Samsung) a copy of where and when particular reviews, previews or trailers about their products have appeared in the press in one big document. Its a very laborious task one that took up most of the day so I was glad to be finished with it come 6 o’clock, although im sorry to say it wasn’t the last i’d be seeing of that fucking coverage.

The rest of the week consisted mostly on the Samsung account and helping on certain aspects of the monthly coverage. Although as expected I was required to do the usual work experience tasks such as do magazine runs and errands but it’s all part and parcel of it. Highlight of the week had to be getting the contact details for all the Agent’s of the England Squad… this was in aid of the BT back the bid promo which Martin Keown (ex arsenal defender) had his hand in.

The staff really friendly and welcoming, was never stuck for work and I didn’t have to make any tea, well only when I offered!

So what can i decipher from the first week, well Kazoo is a busy office full of dedicated PR employees that do have a flair for creativity and they work incredibly hard (I couldn’t believe the amount of time spent looking at their computer screens, no wonder they never bothered to look up to say hello sometimes). The office is bright and relaxed to work in but the hours of researching Blogs for various different accounts and filling in spreadsheets something i haven’t done since i was 15 really took a lot of coffee and clock watching to get me through.

Verdict: so far enjoyable but another 3 weeks of it likely to change my tune.

CONGO AUDIO SLIDSHOW:

I wanted to embed another audio slideshow of O’Reilly’s photography work on some senegalese breakdancers but here is the URL anyways enjoy:

http://www.globalpost.com/video/general/091120/senegal-dakar-breakdancers

Finbarr O’Reilly:

Started journalism as an arts writer for national newspapers in Canada 1998, he joined Reuters in 2001 as a free lance text correspondent in Kinshasa, Congo and spent two years covering central Africas great lakes.

He has also written for the Economist, BBC and CNN

He took up photography full time in 2003 and covers west and central Africa from his base in Dakar, Senegal.

Other awards include First Place multimedia news story in the 2009 POYi (Pictures of the Year International) for Congo coverage

He was born in Ireland but moved to Canada when he was seven years old, he has dual nationality.

His photographs of children at the stand proud polio centre in Kinshasa were singled out for an Honourable mention for 2007 UNICEF picture of the year. Finbarr is a fully supporting member of the stand proud centre.

The stand proud centre help to provide at no cost, the help and support needed to for poor families in the world who have been disabled by polio. This includes leg braces and rehabilitative help for the reintegration of the disabled back into society.

O’Reilly also won in the Diageo Africa Business Reporting Awards for his photographic work on Gold Mining. He and his work was considered by the judges: “to be a clearly gifted news photographer who bears witness to events that most of us would prefer to imagine simply can’t be happening in a modern world.” It is this that separates O’Reilly from his colleagues his work helps to throw light on lives of people and what the hard grind of poverty looks and indeed feels like.

Kate Day who is the communities’ editor for the Telegraph.co.uk, in one of her articles she talks about how photography and photojournalism’s prominence in today’s society is having less visual impact and therefore does not enhance the story like before. That impact to shock people into action.

O’Reilly’s style of using portraiture produces visually lasting images that add a valuable narrative to the articles they are in. His portraits capture not only a sense of desperation and the visual part of the story whether it is poverty or gold mining but it also tells the reader so much about the subject by their facial expressions the clothes they are wearing or the job they are doing. Finbarr is very much a humanitarian when it comes to his photojournalism.

However as a photojournalist his career has been inundated with awful scenes of trauma and suffering, he remarks that it is good sometimes to cover the lighter sides of African life in this case photographing Senegalese break dancers down on a local beach.

“I had gone there to meet some local break dancers and acrobats hoping to do an uplifting cultural story after spending much of the past year covering hardship and conflict in countries such as Democratic Republic of Congo, Sudan, Somalia and Afghanistan.”

These photos to me show that even through people’s hardships things like music and dance, the arts if you like give people a release and escape from the normalities of everyday life.

What I personally love about his work is this attention to detail, each photo presents me with a question why and what is going on. I am therefore constantly intrigued to find out what indeed is going on. Then when placed within an article it hones the journalistic story and reinforces the situation or crisis he has witnessed. I then as a westerner understand even if it’s just a little bit what life is like elsewhere; it is this information that is crucial to making this world a more well understood and equal place to live.

As a person I respect O’Reilly a great deal although he has worked for some big companies and won some incredible awards for his photographs. It seems that he truly cares for what he sees through a lens often staying in residence of the country he is reporting on for long periods of time, for instance spending two years covering the great Africa lakes. It is this dedication I feel that makes his photography much more rewarding to look at. I also admire him for his work with the stand proud centre because Africa is giving him these amazing photographs but it is also important to give something back to African society.

I also like the fact he is human like everyone else and through all the hardship he had witnessed hadn’t hardened him too much. So being able to photograph something a bit on the lighter side of African life really appealed to him:

“It was time for something lighter, and I found it. Or rather, it found me. The group of dancers was slow to gather, so as they gradually arrived and got organized, I wandered around the neighbourhood cultural centre — a run-down building with broken windows, crooked staircases and bleating goats tethered in a dusty yard. In the shade around back, members of the Guelleware theatre group were preparing for rehearsal.”

Journalism in which a news story is presented primarily through photographs with supplementry written copy.

This particular module entailed

60% – Two double paged spread. Mounted in the newsroom with contact sheets and logbook

40% – Logbook, to include research, presentation of my photojournalist, refelective practice and critical engagement.

Had to produe 2 pieces of work on seperate topics that had a cornish/local identity about them.

I decided to do a sport related piece on the second oldest rugby varsity game in the world and a profile piece on a recently elected student president.

Here are the finished pieces in PDF forms and the best of photos that went along with them enjoy!

Rugby Bottle Match Piece

Andy Edmonds