Photo Essay

When I first arrived at Bob Hoffman Video Productions, I was told to work at the front desk. It is the first thing you see when you enter the building, not to mention it was right across the way from my mentor's office. My mentor told me that this desk would be mine for the next three weeks, so when assigned tasks, I would sit in the chair behind desk number one and work quietly and diligently.

Once a few hours passed and people began going out for lunch, I decided it was time that I eat too, so I unpacked my lunch and ate at that desk. Feeling a bit bored, I started flipping through the "San Diego Business Journal's Book of Lists". As I ate my lunch, I got more and more drawn into the magazine, my brain getting filled with a bit more knowledge with each page. Richest people in San Diego, top radio stations, colleges and universities with the highest student enrollment of 2008, it was all so fascinating!

I continued to read the business journal during lunch everyday for the rest of internship.

After a couple of days, I was assigned the task of making the company's Valentine's Day mailer. Unfortunately, my first desk didn't have Photoshop on it, so I bid farewell to the business journal and went to desk number two. I worked on the V. Day mailer for around a week and a half with few interruptions. One day, however, I had just finished a draft of the mailer and since it was sent to the print shop, I found that I had nothing to do. One of the employees, (who was like a second mentor) noticed my lack of doing anything, and brought me the "Pink Bag of Wonders", (left side of image). Inside the bag were hundreds of slides, (the things they used before digital cameras) that a client had brought in.

I sat in great concentration, carefully lifting each slide by the corner, so I wouldn't smudge it. I looked at each image closely, searching for a number or a word somewhere in the picture so that I could finally figure out which side of the picture was up. Out of hundreds of slides, you would think at least one of them would have a word written on it somewhere. After an hour or two of searching, I discovered a picture taken in what appeared to be France that had a poster with words in it. With a sigh of relief, I began cleaning and scanning the slides.

Although it was difficult looking at an image that was only an inch big, it was amazing too. Each time I lifted a slide up to the light, I went some place new. Several photos were from Egypt, France made multiple appearances and so did the Middle East and certain parts of Asia. "What an amazing life this person has had" I thought as I carefully lifted one of the slides and blasted it with "Dust-Off, Compressed Air in a Can".

After I finished my world travels, (and the V-Day mailer) I was sent to computer number three. Since I didn’t have anything to work on, so my mentor decided to test my skills at (film) editing. But, once again, computer number one didn't have any editing programs on it, and neither did computer number two. So, I was moved to computer/desk number three. I only spent one day at this desk because it technically belonged to one of the film editors, (who happened to be out sick the day I used his office). On that day, my main memories were of looking through six hours worth of wedding videos, trying to use a yoga ball as a chair, and reading about the top banks in San Diego during lunch.

Of course, I had the desk curse, so once the owner of desk number three got better I was re-stationed. I worked on editing together the footage that I had captured at desk number three, (I was making a promotional video for a hotel) but luckily all of the footage was of weddings so it was really easy to edit together, (since weddings all seem to follow the same timeline). After two days, I realized that I couldn’t continue editing without inserting music, so I opened up iTunes and got to work.

Unfortunately, right when I decided to look for music, another intern that happened to be at Bob Hoffman Productions decided it would be fun to hide a whole bunch of timers around the office so that they would all go off and nobody would know where they were. I sat, attempting to listen to the thousandth Michael Buble song, as all of the timers went off, forcing my second mentor, (the one who gave me the “Pink Bag of Wonders”) to start throwing boxes off of shelves and scream at the other intern “WHERE ARE MY TIMERS?!” at the top of his lungs. I realized that I was never going to get anything done in the noise, so I grabbed the SDBJ Book of Lists and went to lunch.

On my final day, I had finished both of my projects, reorganized the storage cabinets and had gone through the entire SDBJ Book of Lists. So, I decided that I would watch the process of burning a disk. I had burned disks on my computer at home, but this was different. My second mentor was in charge of burning disks and putting labels on them, so he calmly explained how each machine worked, how they copied disks and how he made labels etc. There were two machines that burned disks and put the labels on them, (each side of the image) and there was a large stack of decks behind his desk, (desk number five) that copied disks.

I watched the machines work until 3:30, when I waved goodbye to everyone, glanced back at all of my desks one last time, sighed as I bid farewell to the Business Journal, and left.