GROW model – Goals, reality, options & will/way

Goals

·      What do you want from your studies? I want to improve my photography skills, so it would be easier to express my ideas. To prepare myself for professional work. Finish studies with a first.

·      How best might you achieve this? To go to all lectures and learn as much as possible, to use and try as many new things as I can. Try getting practice by working as a photographer.

·      What area of industry are you aiming for and why? I am aiming for portraiture photography, because I find it most interesting.

·      What skills will you need to achieve this? I will need to know how to control the light (if working in the studio), how to work and communicate with people.

·      What are your personal goals in the short, medium & long term? In the short term I want to get a degree and in the long term I want to have a job that I like.

Reality

·      What have you done specifically so far to achieve your goal? I finished my first year with a first. I was using studio during summer in order to learn and improve my knowledge about lighting techniques. I had a wedding photo-shoot at the beginning of summer and was shooting a couple of other events for my work and for people that asked me.

·      What challenges have you met and overcome? The biggest challenge for me is language. Due to the fact that English is my second language I usually have self trust issues and it stops me from achieving my goals. I am trying my best to overcome my fear to talk with people in English. Couple of event that I was shooting during summer was for English people, so I managed to to do my job and get a good feedback.

·      What other challenges do you expect to meet? I know that there is plenty photographers out there, so I will need a lot of skills and knowledge to be better than some of them in order to get a job.

·      How far have you travelled to your goal? How far have you yet to go? I still have a lot to do to achieve my goal. I believe that I am just at the beginning of my journey.

Options

·      What else could you do? I could shoot still-life/ products. I could use my I.T. skills to create design or soothing like that.

·      What would be useful to know to help you find out more? It would be useful to know someone who is already working in this field.

·      Who would it be useful to talk to? How can they help? Someone who is already working in this field, to learn what difficulties they had/have.

·      How can my current situation/job help me? Due to the fact that I am a photography student, I can learn and try a lot of different things before actually starting to work. I have given time to do mistakes and learn from them.

·      How should I be promoting myself? I should have my own portfolio, website, business cards. I should try to find a way how to communicate with people that are in this industry.

Will/Way forward?

·      When will you take action? I started taking an action when I started my course. I am trying to improve and achieve my goal making easy steps, but I believe that it is not enough and I should start doing more as soon as possible.

·      What do you need to know to move towards your goal? I need to develop my skills in studio. I need to improve my communicating skills, to improve my English. I also need more work experience and maybe try shadowing or working with a photographer.