One of the things that I think makes our internship special is that we have "intern training" every Wednesday for 2 to 2.5 hours. A Public Affairs Officer teaches it and the topics range from newswriting to media relations to social media etc. We also learn from the visual information people who teach us about things like broadcasting, graphics, and photography. These training sessions include copy editing training (through quizzes and practice - its basically Get to Know Your AP Stylebook 101) which in turn improves our writing. The sessions are a nice way to get to know the different facets of public affairs works, and they give the internship a more hands-on approach because we get face-to-face time with many of the PAOs.
Today our training focused on social media and writing for the web. We learned about the various networks NAVAIR and NAWCAD use to get their news out and talked with the Social Media/External Website people who walked us through how they manage those pages (Twitter/Facebook/Website/Youtube) and what writing styles/guidelines apply to them. They talked about what makes web writing compelling and how to draw your readers in, too.
After training, all the interns went out to lunch together. Aren't we cute:) We gorged ourselves on Bollywood Masala (actually though...I ate way too much but Indian food is soOo good) then came back to go to a photography lesson with the VI photographer, Kelly. She is awesome and her desk is surrounded by really cool photos. She talked us through using the camera -- why different settings matter and how to use them appropriately. Its confusing! Aperture/shutter speed/white balance/ISO - there is so much to learn but its fascinating and its interesting to see how even slight changes to the camera's settings can completely alter the photo you capture.
Everyone got a camera to work with...can you say heavy? Those things feel like they weigh 10 pounds! We went outside because even though it was hot lets be honest - taking pictures outside is way more fun than indoors. Everyone had to pick a spot with three objects to focus on and then practice focusing on each one separately while adjusting aperture accordingly. It was hard! We then went out to the corner of two roads and shot cars driving by to practice using the shutter speed and panning the camera. It was funny because we wanted the cars to be going fast but everyone kept slowing down when they saw us. Maybe they mistook the long camera lens for a kind of radar? Who knows. We also had a 'concerned individual' pull over to ensure we were authorized to take photos on the base. (We are - but there are procedures in place on Naval bases about photography and you can't just go around taking pictures.)
The lesson ended inside with a little run-through of how to shoot using the manual setting which is difficult because you have to decide all the settings instead of letting the camera choose for you, and then we looked at the pictures we took. They weren't anything special (hey we're beginners) but Elana got a good 'aperture' one that she sneakily shot of Courtney, Annalise, and me. We all really enjoyed it because it was fun to learn on our feet with the cameras actually in hand and I know I definitely want to learn more about photography.
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