My job pays pretty well. But I hate it. And it’s 80 miles from my home and the commute plus the horrible hours are killing my will to live.
But, like I said, it pays well. Anywhere else I go, I’ll be going to less money. So here I stay, hoping I’ll get laid off.
But sooner or later, I have to leave. But it scares me. Scares the shit out of me.
I am also in the job hunting market. There are lots of websites out there. Try www.doctorjob.com as a start. Look at other peoples resumes, get someone else to look at yours. One thing that was suggested on a course recently is to put down your good points and things you’d like in a job and try and get someone else to think of a job description that would match it.
Dafty (who has her fingers crossed for her job interview on Wednesday)
PS Anyonw where I can get practice psycometric tests from? )
Yay! I’m glad you’re more relaxed. And I’m also glad you’re putting your resume together anyway - most of my friends have found that it’s really important to ALWAYS keep your resume up-to-date. Even if you don’t need to look for a job immediately, you never know when something will happen. When you do write your resume, make sure you do so slowly. Sounds stupid, but when I try to do things too fast, just to get them over with, I start screwing up and making mistakes (which isn’t good 'cause I’m a writer). So make sure you really think about it, and when you’ve got something down on paper, go over it with a fine-toothed comb. Good luck!
Oh, and Daftbugger - good luck with your interview!
I work at a commercial photo lab just outside the Beltway. We were originally totally chemical, but now we have both chemical and digital. Many many of our employees are current and former darkroom folks.
Do not sell yourself short on skills. There are certain sublteties that a good darkroom tech has all over a digital geek, no matter how technically proficient the geek is. You deal with the way images look, how they are supposed to look, and what can be gotten out of negatives. Digital photography does pretty much the same thing. And you’re right, it has taken years for the technology to catch up with the potential of computers (primarily because output has been crummy until the last several years).
Now there is digital output directly onto photo paper (called a Lambda) that has the same known archival qualities as any photo paper. You would be surprised how quickly you can turn your skillset into a digital skill set. As I said, many of our digital people have extensive darkroom experience (me included). If we can learn this digital stuff, you can too (and lots of our folks have learned it on their own, believe it or not).
You might want to investigate the digital end of the photographic world. Believe me, there will be a place for you if you are willing to give it a try. Your skills are too valuable to just throw away!
Tess, how did you choose a resume consultant? I don’t know a thing about resumes, so I not only can’t tell a good resume service from a bad one, I can’t even tell if I’m looking at a legitimate service or an Internet scam artist. (And there have to be scam artists posing as resume writers on the Internet. It would be too easy for no one to be doing it.)
Dude.
Do you have any idea how many people browse this board that 1) Hire & fire for a living and 2) work for national companies and can give you the skinny on what their specific company has to offer & how to get a job there?
Your prior posts ARE your resume. MMMMUUUuuaaaahahahahaha!!!
But seriously.
If you’re comfortable getting naked for us:
–What education do you have? (SDMB charter member status bears some weight here for breadth if not depth of knowledge:))
–What (in 5 bullet points) do you do right now for money?
–What do you NOT want (desk? working with the public? sunlight?)
–What else, completely unrelated to what you do now, are you interested in?
–Will you/Can you relocate? (to another City? State? Star system?)
You do have an e-mail link to your profile, right?
Best wishes. I did the unemployment paralysis thing for 10 months after the Army. It’s no fun, but you’re in your right mind to be thinking about options.
What about getting retrained? A lab technician is a 1-2 year degree, you can get a technician’s degree in some other field. Many community colleges offer night schools in technicians degrees, and i’d assume you would get things like pell grants or other types of grants.
Maybe 3 years from now you could start on a certificate or associates degree at night school in community college.
I have found that * most* job hunting websites are worse than useless (they only seem to exist to funnel spam into your inbox) so avoid them. If you are seriously worried about your job becoming obsolete, I recommend you pick up What Color Is Your Parachute (because even though it’s older than I am, it’s still a calming, thought-provoking read) and making the hard choice to focus on a new job field.
Trust me, the only thing worse than being unemployed is being unemployed with no prospects.
I don’t have a degree or any formal photo training. I learned on the job, & I have no facilities in reasonable driving range that provide evening or weekend classes in photography. The local U. doesn’t offer them.
I have a Bachleor Of University Studies Degree (Liberal Arts) from Middle Tennessee State University in Murfreesboro, Tennessee. I got this with a National Merit Scholarship for Academic Achievement, and completed my dregree by examination, and through night courses while working full time.
[ul]
[li]I print aerial photographs for mapping.[/li][li]I create dipositive prints, a form of specialized transparency used in mapping & engineering.[/li][li]I prepared & mix chemicals for photography purposes.[/li][li]I assist in maintaining the photographic processor.[/li][li]I act as a courier/messenger as needed.[/li][/ul]
I do all of the above with very little/no supervision.
I do not want a boss that micromanages. I am an adult, and if given duties that I understand and am trained to do, I can carry them out unsupervised. I do not want work in a warehouse/factory environment.
I am very interested in Library/Archival work, and I have some past experience in these fields. I have an extensive background in Medical Terminology. I have taken occasional refresher courses in computers, first aid, and creating satisfied customers. I once worked for Disney, and completed their Guest Satisfaction training program.
I can re-locate, for good working conditions/pay, and the Chicago - Milwalkee - Madison area would be one I’d really enjoy moving back to.
And my e-mail addy has always been there.
Out of curiosity how is that digital cannot trump film in terms of aerial photography? In reading digital camera reviews I thought digital had pretty much come even with, and blown past 35mm film in term of real world quality with some of the latest 9-15 megapixel cameras they are selling to professionals.
Is it more than just native resolution involved? Does it have to do with the special processing needs of aerial photos?
Well i meant anything you might enjoy that offered nights or weekend classes, not just chem lab technician or photography degrees.
I can’t speak for aerial photography, but I cans peak to the needs of the graphics industry.
Digital cameras/images do a nice job in many ways but they are just a whole different animal that a film negative or a transparency. What is happening in my industry (commercial graphics), is that photographers are taking great pictures but the resolution is sometimes small (lots of news folks are doing this). They often are making photos for reproduction in a newspaper. Well, down the road when some museum wants to blow that image up to mural size (we just finished doing a huge thing for the International Spy Museum and this became a problem), an image that works perfectly fine in a paper is just not big enough to blow up. Negatives, on the other hand, can be scanned at a very high resolution (and the bigger the negative, obviously, the bigger the final output can be) and used satisfactorily at 8’ or 10.’ I know this sounds really huge, but this size display is not that big in my industry. People do not like pixelated images and even if you can add some noise to cover that, the resulting softness in the image sometimes just won’t work.
Not every digital photographer has this issue…many are using some fine equipment and allowing for large file sizes when they shoot. The problem comes when you are trying to make a small file into a large one. A news photographer running around catching action shots may want to take lots of relatively small file size images that are perfectly appropriate for immediate use, but not big enough for enlargement later.
There is another issue with digital imaging and that is artifacting in the image. You have probably seen this yourself on TV when someone wears an outfit with a tiny pattern in it. The same thing happens in digital images, usually in fine detail against some sort of opposing background. Sometimes this can be fixed, but sometimes the artifacting just makes an image unuseable.
Resolution is a very big problem …when you’re taking photos from a mile up.
Then again, another big problem is legal.
Real estate is the most serious business in the world. They don’t make land no more. Which county owns what land effects millions of dollars in taxes, and even Congressional districting. Nations go to war over strips of utterly worthless land.
So, if the State Government is surveying & mapping land (which it must do, it’s a legal obligation), the standard of mapping must be both very high, and unimpeachable. Solid/chemical photography, printed on paper from extant negatives, is hard to fake, relatively speaking. Digital images are faked daily.
The State provides both maps dervived from Aerial Photos, and the photos themselves, to assist in settling real estate disputes. As such, they must not be produced in such a way that easily opens them to legal challenges.
It’s gonna be a while until a digital system that permits verification shows up that will satisfy the courts.
At first, I thought you were joking with that link, Bosda, but I didn’t “get it,” so I looked closer and saw it was broken. Apparently, that site doesn’t like outside linking to images. When I typed the URL in directly, I got what you wanted us to see. Pretty cool. (Try following the link yourself to see what the rest of us got.)
BTW, very interesting info on the need for film. So how are they fixing this in five years time? (To contunue the hijack.)
Funny.
The link worked fine for me, just now.
Answer–I dunno.
If I knew, I’d patent it first.
Yes, that seems to be an issue, doesn’t it?
I do some “hobby” photography, and occasionally I’ll sell something (usually I’ll sell rights to a photo). The client will ask for a digital file. They usually want a file around the size of 40-50 megs. I have a semi-decent scanner that can produce a file of about that size from a 35 mm transparency.
Now, I don’t know much about the new high falutin’ digital cameras (I have a nice little cheepie one that is fine for web work and stuff) but my guess that even if you took compressed jpg files, they’d have to be 18-20 megs to be big enough and decent enough to suit many clients’ needs. That seems like a pretty huge file for a digital camera. Especially if you’re like me, and take lots and lots and lots of photos in one session. So, for right now, even if I could afford a high falutin’ digital camera, I would still use my film emulsion camera. At this point, I just get the film developed but don’t order prints. (Or I take slides. Slides are better.) No need to pay for printing if I can scan the negs in and do my Photoshop magic to them and then print them out on my printer.
And that brings us to Photoshop. (I know I’m going a little astray here . . . ) I used to work in a “traditional” photo lab. I was a photo retoucher. Even though this was only 5 years ago, our lab hadn’t transitioned over to digital completely (not even close). I used photo dyes and retouched the prints, one by one. (Didn’t use the airbrush, hardly ever. Airbrush isn’t used nearly as much as you think.) Everyone in the retouching/art department was sweating bullets, worried about when “digital” would take over and then we’d be out of a job. (Well, as it turned out the lab went under one day and everyone in the building was out of a job, but that’s beside the point.) We were all figuring that we’d be screwed because of the looming “digital” threat, but in my case, it was okay. I learned how to use Photoshop, embraced Photoshop, and used my retouching skills (aesthetic) in Photoshop. A good transition for me. Not that my Photoshop skills have actually gotten me a new job anywhere (yet), but I believe it helps me sell more photos and other products from my artsy websites. And my background as a traditional photo retoucher was a big help in that. So it’s all good.
