Our intern, Courtney, shares her thoughts on her time with us so far, from capturing the unconventional in her photographs to finding inspiration all around and feeling part of something big.
Hey, I’m Courtney G. Jacobs, an intern here at Jacob Lund.
Let me take you back a couple of years when I came across an opportunity to start a two-year internship. I didn’t think I would make it onto the program. But I did, I’m here and this is my experience of working under Jacob so far.
A rollercoaster
Wow! What a ride these two years have been. A rollercoaster that I didn’t expect. I arrived wanting to be pushed and challenged without knowing what those challenges would bring or what they would mean to me. But I believed in myself, I thought “I can totally do this”.
News flash! Not without a struggle.
In the beginning, I was very confident and thought it’s lifestyle shoots, that’s easy, right? Little did I realize that our goal for every shoot was to step it up a notch. The next one and the one after that always better than the last, being pushed to take my work to another level creatively. Don’t get me wrong, I didn’t want it to be easy, but I wasn’t ready for the moments where I would doubt myself completely as a photographer.
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When planning my shoots, I was constantly thinking that I need to do something different. This became quite a challenge and at this point I started to question my creativity. How could I do something new that I haven’t tried before or that I haven’t even seen anywhere before, every single time I shoot?
This was the exact challenge I wanted for myself. I’d signed up for this and I understood what I really wanted from this internship: creative challenges and stimulation so I can get better at what I love doing.
Finding inspiration
First, I looked at what inspired me the most and what I really wanted to try and shoot myself. The current campaigns that Nike, ESPN and Under Armour (just to name a few) were doing, gave me the inspiration to shoot sports in a similar way. I tried, and I tried, and I’m still not there yet but this internship helped me find a passion, to reach for the stars shooting certain concepts and exploring ideas like sports and portraiture.
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After every sport or fitness shoot I do, I always think if I could’ve done better or I could’ve done something differently. There were occasions when I would get back to the office very disappointed in myself for not bringing a shoot to life the way I envisaged. The upside to that disappointment was that there was always something new and unexpected that I ended up shooting. I learnt from this and now try to allow myself some unstructured time on location, so I can force myself to shoot or experiment with something new.
How to come up with something new?
When it comes to planning an unusual shoot, one that is out of the ordinary, that you don’t see as often online, I struggled coming up with fresh ideas. So, I looked to what was happening in the world around me at that time. Trends taking the world by storm turned into new concepts. Unconventional people (or rather who society would deem unconventional) shot in unexpected scenarios became a way for me to capture all kinds of people in a world where you won’t usually see them.
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Black Mirror and #Metoo movements
Shows like Black Mirror on Netflix gave me this idea to shoot something futuristic with mirrored glass to symbolize the screens that we look through every day of our lives. The #Metoo movement was blowing up all over the world. It gave me this idea to plan a shoot around strong diverse woman protesting for their rights. There was something so powerful in shooting that project not only because of the scope of the movement but the fact that we were an all-female group shooting that day. This made me feel a part of something big, something meaningful.
I definitely didn’t think a job like this would help me grow the way it did. What a feeling to be part of something great or feel like you are doing something that could potentially mean so much to someone else. It has opened my eyes to things that are happening around me in the world. I have grown as a creative in this past two years and I’m super excited for what is to come next.
If you’ve got any questions about my work or the internship, put them in the comments below.
Please see the collection below for some of my favourite work that I’ve shot during my two years here.
Comments (4)
Absolutely love your work! Bringing a lot of realism to stock images. Could you possibly tell me more about the internship.
Wow Courtney those pictures are absolutely stunning !! You are soo talented! Can’t wait to see more of your work, keep going girl ❤️
So proud of you Courtney.
Do you by any chance do workshops or planning on doing it in future?
Great read…. Amazing photography…. May you grow from strength to strength…