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This post has been created and written by attendees of the 10 day JarvieDigital Bootcamp 2011 – (Interns for summer 2011)

Photo Boot Camp With Scott Jarvie: The Experience

(All photos in this post were taken by Laurel Scott)

Mile after mile and the Iowa cornfields turned into more fields, turned into hills, turned into mountains as I drove west on I-80 hour after hour after hour for one thousand one hundred and seventeen miles. Destination: boot camp “Shock incarceration,” the “quick-fix solution” to “scare kids straight.”

I had just finished my last semester of coursework at Iowa State and I was more than ready to get out of there – but I had just one more thing I had to do before I could be done forever with my worthless degree and never have to think about that money sucking institution again. I had to have an internship; to intern is to restrict to or confine within prescribed limits, as prisoners of war or enemy aliens. This is exactly what I thought an internship would be like, and for the first internship I started, that is exactly what it was. Stuck in an office with someone who knew less about what they were doing than I did – and I was looking at another three hundred and ninety-nine hours worth of grueling busy-work, just to get a degree I would never use.

As one might guess, that internship didn’t work out – we parted ways and haven’t spoken since.

I really wanted an internship in Ames, where I already had a house, friends and family. I didn’t want to find somewhere new to live – with people I didn’t know in a place I didn’t know.

As my last semester was nearing its end and I had to find someplace to intern for the summer, I started applying absolutely everywhere. Even the places I had no interest in interning – I actually applied to every internship on ed2010.com that even mentioned the word “photo.” This amounted to well over fifty. Unfortunately, most magazine internships are in New York – a place I had less than zero interest in moving to for the summer. I was only interested in either working with a sole proprietor photographer, or in a photo studio at a magazine.

Sitting at my desk, the walls are bare, the furniture bland. The carpet is Cream, the bookcase Biscuit, and the desk Distant Gray. The blinds are Beige, the couch Capri Coast, and the dresser Deserted Island. The walls, I’ll bet you, are White Diamond. And all I can do is sit and stare at my blank computer screen. I need a place to intern.

If nothing is within easy driving distance of where I currently live, then I’ll have to move, it’s that simple. So I started looking into sole proprietors in places where I thought the landscape was attractive, or in parts of the country where I thought I might want to live someday.

I stumbled on a lot of blog posts by past interns of sole proprietors And one of those photographers was Scott Jarvie. I contacted Scott the same way I contacted many sole proprietors in the west – with a simple email explaining who I was and what I was looking for. Most responded saying that they would be away from their base office during the summer, or that they simply were not interested in having an intern.

But Scott responded saying “sweet deal.” As long as I was willing to make it happen, the internship was mine.

Utah is a long way from Iowa – you can’t just drive home for the weekend to visit friends and family – once you’re out there, you’re out there. I was a little apprehensive about leaving for the summer, but I ultimately decided that working with a sole proprietor, Scott, would be much more beneficial in the long run than finding an internship that I would hate that would be close to home.

And so here I am – in Utah – interning with Scott Jarvie at JarvieDigital Photography – and surprisingly enough, I don’t feel like an enemy of war. (more…)