Picturing a Career Through Internship Experience
This past summer I had the honor to be an intern for Legacy Livestock Imaging. Legacy is a livestock photography company. For my internship this summer I traveled to five different junior nationals with Legacy.
I found out about this internship in my imagery in agriculture class. Heidi Anderson, the owner of Legacy, came and spoke to my class. She spoke about Legacy and how they started a photography company and building that brand. After Heidi spoke, I talked to her about the internships Legacy offers.
Each junior national shows lasted about a week. The first junior national we attended was Red Angus. Red Angus is a smaller breed and they have fewer people attend their junior national compared to Hereford or Angus. With less people coming to this show it was a great week for us interns to “get our toes wet” and meet a lot of new people.
The second week we went to Shorthorn Junior Nationals in Madison, Wisconsin. This was one of the “bigger” junior nationals we attended. This was also the first junior nationals that we were not the official photographers. Not being the official photographers made this week different from the week before where we were the official photographers. We were not allowed in the ring at this show and we did not make sure we have photos of every exhibitor. Instead we photographed from outside the ring and only of past clients.
Week three Legacy went to Brangus Junior Nationals in Hutchison, Kansas, one of the smallest junior nationals, while I attended Hereford Junior Nationals in Grand Island, Nebraska, the largest junior nationals. I attended Herefords to show my Hereford heifer. Although Legacy did not attend this junior national I still captured some photos of clients.
During the fourth week we all met back up in Madison, Wisconsin for Angus Junior Nationals. This is the junior national I have the most experience with being that I have shown Angus since 2013. Angus junior nationals was similar to Shorthorns in that we were not the official photographers. Due to not being the official photographers we were able to learn how Legacy edits their photos.
We left Madison, Wisconsin to head all the way to Denver, Colorado for Limousin Junior Nationals. This was our last junior nationals of the summer. Here we were the official photographers, we had more to do and were in the ring almost every day. This week I gained more experience with organizing photos from Angus. We had a multitude of photos from Angus of different clients and they needed to be put in specific folders for each client. It was great to learn more of the business side of Legacy.
Overall, I had a great summer interning for Legacy. It was the perfect combination of photography and show cattle. I have since been asked back to shows in the fall with Legacy and I am excited to see what the future holds.