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Shy Kerris

I have been looking further into what I would like to do after my time at Plymouth College of Art. I did initially consider continuing on at Plymouth College of Art to complete my BA Honours degree, however, after reflecting on my time at college over the period of the ED Photography course, I decided this was not the right move for me.

As I had now made the decision to move on from continuing my education in college, I wanted to find a position in care as this is something else I would like to have a career in. I spoke to some family members about my career choice and my plans for the future and I was told of a position available at a respite centre in Cornwall. I immediately inquired about this position to see what qualifications and experience I may need for the job. 

As a close family member is a senior with the agency, they agreed to give me an interview to see if I would be fitting for the job. These are some of the requirements for working in care at a respite centre:

It is a full time job so the employee must be flexible and available when needed.

Must provide emotional, social and physical support to clients.

To ensure that clients are taking part in a range of activities.

To provide a structured environment where the clients feel independent and empowered.

Salary for this job role can be anywhere between £8.30-£13 per hour. This can vary between each position within the respite centre and how much experience you have. 

As for the experience needed for this job, based on my interview and my natural personality, I was offered the position to train on the job alongside a senior at the company. This way I will be working alongside someone with 10+ years of experience, this will continue for my first 2 weeks of employment after which I will be working in a team of 6 people with 6 clients. Each of us will have a responsibility for a client and their needs until they leave the centre.

I have accepted this job as ultimately I would like to pursue a career in care or nursing. I am hoping this job role will give me the experience I need to obtain higher profile job roles either within the Shy Kerris agency or elsewhere. 

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Personal Statement

I am applying for the role as a respite nurse at Shy Kerris because I would like to enroll in a job that both challenges me and includes an aspect of caring for someone and tending to their daily needs. I chose this job role as I believe the patients staying on a short-term basis greatly benefits both the permanent carer and the patient themselves without forming a bond between the patient and temporary carer that would effect the working environment. 

By successfully gaining a position within this company it will aid in me acquiring the experience I need to kick start a potential career in care or nursing to either gain a higher profile position within Shy Kerris or with another company. Ultimately I would like to maintain a permanent role working in care, I have come to this conclusion based on social situations I have been in previously, and how I was able to handle and overcome them.  

From my previous employment positions I have gained the ability to work patiently with both my peers and customers/clients. I believe this is one of, if not the most important characteristic to have when working in the care industry. I always make sure to complete tasks to a high standard within my work and to the best of my ability as well as this it is important to me to provide a high standard of customer care and to meet the customers needs to their standard. Overall I am a very dedicated person to any job I enroll in and bring a high standard of care/service to my position of work.

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Portfolio

I have created an online portfolio using Tumblr. I chose to use Tumblr as it is easy to edit your webpage to look how you would like it to, as well as this it is free to customise and maintains the high quality in each image uploaded. By using this platform for my portfolio I have customised my website to look exactly how I wanted it to and the way in which I wanted to present my images.

Portfolio:  http://eleanorlhill.tumblr.com/

Using Photoshop I began by creating a logo for my photography page. I didn't want to use an online template for my logo as I didn't want to have one that was similar to anyone else's. I think I have successfully achieved a unique logo through drawing it out and designing it myself. 

Before putting any of my images into my portfolio I took all of the images I wanted to include and took the originals of each one back into Photoshop. I did this so I could tweek/re-edit the images as my Technical skills have improved dramatically since I shot a lot of my images. I ended up re-editing all of the images I used for my portfolio as I have learned several new processes in Photoshop and Lightroom to increase the quality of my images. These aspects include: lighting, airbrushing and graphics skills.

These are two examples of how I edited the image previously and how I re-edited them for use in my portfolio.

                       Before                                                            After

Most of my images required very little adjustments, for example: In this image I didn't make many changes. I straightened up the collar and balanced out the tones in the face slightly to make it look softer; these are the only changes I felt were necessary to make to this image.

                       Before                                                          After

However in this image the way I chose to edit it changes dramatically. I learned how to airbrush correctly since I shot this image among other techniques in Camera RAW to achieve the maximum effect I could from this image. I also stated using Lightroom recently so this means I could adjust the colours much better than I could using Photoshop like I did previously. 

Once I had re-touched/re-edited my final images, I uploaded them to my online portfolio in no specific order, however, once I had gone back and reviewed the aesthetic of my portfolio I decided to re-upload some of my images in a different order as there were clumps of black and white images together instead of being spread out amongst colour images. Once I had gone back and moved the images around it looked much more professional.

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CV

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Peer Review Of Progression Preparation

Today we paired up and further discussed our plans for higher education or, what we would like to progress onto after college. Each of us were asked to record each others future plans, what research had been done to support our decisions and how we could help ourselves decide what we wanted to do after our college course has ended.

I have previously considered continuing to study photography at the Plymouth College of Art, however, when I was offered a job opportunity working in cornwall at a rest-bite centre, I re-evaluated both my education and living situation, and decided it would benefit me more and push me towards what I want in life to work in cornwall.

Over the course of this term I would like to book as many studio sessions as I can. I want to do this to take advantage of the resources I have here as this will help me decide whether I want to make the investment of buying all of my own studio equipment to continue building my portfolio. Long term I would like to continue creating work from a studio as I work well alongside the equipment and general process of a studio shoot.

So far I have lined up 5 models to shoot studio photography with over the course of October to build up my portfolio but, more than anything, approach a more artistic theme within my shoots as this is an area I haven’t experimented with much.