Melissa's excellent photo adventure at Rogers Centre
By Melissa Verge
Canadian Baseball Network
I sat in my first university photo journalism class wondering why Peter, our professor, was speaking a different language.
He had an impressive grey moustache and a kind face, but he couldn’t speak English.
The marzipan chocolate bar I was eating began to taste like regret. I should not have taken this class.
It reminded me of high school math when I had no idea what the teacher was talking about.
But this time the confusion was unexpected. I was used to taking pictures for my family who have more pictures in the house than they do wall space. The documentary of our lives is plastered in the kitchen, living room, and even the bathroom. The car has pictures in it sticky tacked to the steering wheel.
I guess my mom likes to look at us when she gets road rage and thinks about honking at someone. Even the family rabbits picture is in the car.
I’m not kidding.
Since I usually want to avoid being in the pictures, I thought I was well practiced in being The Verge families unofficial photographer.
But Professor Peter was talking about some next level stuff.
ISO and depth of field were not in my vocabulary. I knew where the on/off button was, the take a picture button, and the review picture button. That had gotten me pretty far.
My mom thought I was a good photographer.
But our first assignment for photo journalism class was four pictures and it took me four hours to complete.
Mom was wrong.
I spent the first hour standing on the sidewalk taking pictures of cars and trying to make the car clear and the background blurry. I believe that’s called depth of field. Or it could be shutter speed, honestly I’m still confused.
When we got our week two assignment I got a little braver. Prof Peter wanted us to go out and shoot sports photography.
Me and my experience of three days using a DSLR camera thought it would be a great idea to take the assignment to the Rogers Centre field. Blue Jays batting practice would make great pictures.
I was given professional advice from a professional: fake it till you make it.
I could fake it. My media pass said photographer in bold letters. I was a photographer.
Well, I was definitely some sort of photographer as I stood on the Rogers Centre field aiming the camera in the direction of Dalton Pompey with the lens cap still on.
It took me three pictures to figure out that the reason they were turning out all black had nothing to do with the settings.
If my camera bag that said #23 on it since it was a school borrowed hadn’t given me away as an amateur, I was surely caught now.
My face was now a nice shade of red and it stayed that way until I left the field.
It was harder than I thought to fit in with the pros.
I’m not sure why I felt compelled to share the lens cap story with someone who was also on the field working for one of the Toronto newspapers.
On one hand I feel like we’re all just people and we all started somewhere, even if it was taking pictures of a lens cap.
On the other hand if there’s anything that screams “don’t hire me” it’s probably telling people who could potentially one day be hiring you that you have no idea what you’re doing.
I didn’t really have a choice though because I couldn’t really quite figure out how to focus so I also needed some advice.
Professor Peter needed some pictures or I wasn’t going to pass the assignment.
Hopefully journalism is a bigger world than I think it is, or if it ever is those guys sitting across from me at an interview table they see past the lens cap incident and towards some sort of potential.