Cydney Scott — Photojournalism, Visual Storytelling and Seeing People First

TMac 00:11
Hello and welcome to the Zoom with our feet podcast, the pod about learning photography. With me, your host, T Mack. I am a professional photographer and videographer who also happens to be a teacher. Yes, I’m licensed to teach, and the photography lab is open. On this, the very first episode of the Zoom pod, I can’t think of a better professional photographer to talk to about the basics and beyond of learning photography than Boston-based Sidney Scott. Scott is a multi-award-winning photographer who is currently the senior photojournalist at Boston University in their marketing and communication department. Our guest speaker is in the photo lab. Let’s talk to a pro. Sydney Scott, welcome to the Zoom with our feet podcast.

Cydney Scott 01:09
Thank you for having me. It’s great to be here.

TMac 01:14
How did your photography journey start?

Cydney Scott 01:19
Yeah, so uh I’ve always been an artistic person. I come from a creative household. And um when I was in high school, maybe even junior high, I started to get into taking pictures and it was sort of for fun and it was for yearbook. And uh I just enjoyed doing it um whenever I could. It wasn’t like a passion at that point. Um, and when I was a junior, I believe, sophomore junior in high school, um, I went to an antique store with my mom and we were flipping through old life magazines. And um I flipped to what’s called a double truck, which is when you open the page and you’re you have an image that covers the entire page. And there was a photo there called The Dragon is Slain by uh Alfred Eisenstadt, and it is um a view of children watching a puppet theater um in a Paris park and the variety of reactions to the moment when the dragon is slain, uh, it just in that minute just like clicked and it made me understand. Oh, this is what photography’s for. This is what photography’s for.

TMac 02:28
So he’s sitting, uh it’s above his head and he’s shooting towards the kids.

Cydney Scott 02:33
Yes, exactly. Yeah.

TMac 02:34
That’s the photo.

Cydney Scott 02:35
Yeah.

TMac 02:35
And there’s like 20 of them, and it’s a huge surprise.

Cydney Scott 02:39
It’s a huge crowd, but there’s maybe six um in the foreground that have just, you know, there’s one kid hugging another, and then another’s like this, and another one’s screaming, and another one’s laughing. And it’s just uh it’s a it’s amazing.

TMac 02:52
It’s just like the best culture hour I’ve ever would you uh go out on a limb and say that was inspiration. Was that when you said hey?

Cydney Scott 03:03
100%. Yeah, yeah. And I and I don’t know, you know, I’m a photojournalist now and I have been for, I don’t know, 25 years. And I don’t know, wow, 25 years. Um, and I I don’t know if I knew what a photojournalist was, um, because our local photographer for our paper, Bless His Heart, just kind of had us point at stuff when he took our picture for like the Daily Rag. In fact, I have a series of pictures of my father and I pointing at things throughout time. We’re like, let’s point at stuff and we get our picture taken. So I don’t know that I knew that that’s what photojournalism was, but that photo made me realize you can make a living doing this, and I want to do that. That’s what I want to do. Yeah. And it went from there.

TMac 03:48
So you mentioned high school, and uh I asked this to all the to all the photographers I talked to because it usually dates them. What was the first camera you remember using?

Cydney Scott 04:02
Yeah, so the first one was a Vivitar 110, which was the little like brick ones, but that’s like, you know, middle school when I’m you know on my own time. Um the first one I had at in college, I think my dad, it was my dad’s, and it was either on Nikon FE or Nikon FA. I don’t remember which one it was, but it was a film camera, you know. Um I don’t remember if the lens would come off or not. I don’t remember. Um, I I want to say not because it was a challenge to shoot with one with only one lens in school.

TMac 04:39
So but your formative photography years were film.

Cydney Scott 04:44
Yeah, yeah, they were. In fact, um, and I, you know, I’m really grateful for that because I think shooting in film um forces you to move slower and think before you act. Um you know, I know now that I’m shooting digital that I missed stuff, but from a learning how to really think and focus for lack of better term on what you’re doing.

TMac 05:09
Pun intended.

Cydney Scott 05:10
Yeah, pun intended, basically. Um, I I think it was really good for me. It was really good for my brain. I think it was a really good lesson. I think it was really good to learn how to um develop film and process those prints in a in a studio um or in a dark room, sorry. Um and then I think I was a professional for one year and we switched over to digital. And it was hard. I didn’t, I mean, everybody looked like hot dogs for a while with the first digital cameras. Nobody looked quite right. So I really fought it. And then finally, my editor was like, you know, the film processor is kind of disgusting now because there’s not much there, the only person using film is you. So we need to really need to retire it and you need to start shooting.

TMac 05:52
It’s it’s come down to you, Scott. You’re you’re that girl still souping film.

Cydney Scott 05:59
I was not souping it enough for it to keep the gears.

TMac 06:03
I’m I’m I’m interested. I’m gonna uh pull the thread on the uh I’m gonna use a phrase mindfulness and that you learned uh that and brought that still to making pictures with a digital device, and you think that was good, yes?

Cydney Scott 06:30
I think it was. Um one of the best photos I shot when I was I went to school at Ohio University, and one of the best photos I shot was on what’s called Jeff Hill, and it’s a very steep brick hill. And when it was snowy, people would sled down it, and they would make um like snow jumps to go off. And I went out there with my um, you know, one lens camera to shoot everybody sledding, and uh there it was all manual, everything was manual, the focus was manual, it was all figured out. So I remember very vividly watching other people come down and then predicting where the plane was that I needed to focus on, and then clicking the moment that sledder was in the air, and I managed to get it, and I knew that I got it because she was out of focus when I clicked and then out of focus again when it opened up, and I knew she popped into that frame and was in focus when I actually exposed. But like those were the kind of things that I think were helpful for my photo education was to have to kind of slow down and not, I mean, now the photos probably would have been absolutely killer because you’d have a long lens, you’d have a continuous focus that you could just track them all the way down the hill. But like, what fun is that? Like, that’s not work at all, right? So I like the idea that we had like we had like gorilla photography early on, we had to just like figure out how to yeah.

TMac 07:58
Well, so that so that leads to that was you learning all of the three parts of the exposure triangle. So in that case, that depth of field wasn’t very deep, and you were anticipating yet another skill, yep, right? Um, because you know, I I liken that to, you know, after a thousand soccer games, I kind of know when they’re gonna come together or when a header is gonna be close, and I’m anticipating. Um, but that answers the next question about exposure triangle, and that was college. Yeah, so now you are spending that time in those practical situations. You checked out gear, went to a place you knew that there were people, in this case going to be sled riding, yep, and practiced.

Cydney Scott 08:52
Yep, yep.

TMac 08:54
Oh, that’s awesome.

Cydney Scott 08:56
Yeah. And and you were limited, right? Because you were in college, there’s only so much film you could buy, and only so much time you had to process film and and like soup all those, you know, roles and and whatnot. So you yeah, you really had to be economical with your shooting and your thinking. Yeah.

TMac 09:15
And plan the shot. I mean, or at least visualize the shot first and try to execute it. But I’m always uh, how did people uh when I ask, how did you teach yourself? Because in in all of our cases, uh at some point we had to teach ourselves all those three, how they interrelate. I make this adjustment, I gotta this and this, and when you’re on film, there was a limit to light sensitivity that they’re that we’re benefiting from just jacking that thing up now.

Cydney Scott 09:51
Yeah, yeah. I mean, for me, I had the benefit of taking classes, so that would be the assignment. Like this week, you need to shoot something that shows long depth of field and short depth of field. So that would help you understand the concept of the aperture because you would play around with that. And they would have given obviously given you a lesson of like what the aperture does to your depth of field.

TMac 10:12
Of course.

Cydney Scott 10:13
And so, um, so we would exercise those and then we’d work on, I’m sure there was blur action assignments, which is working on the shutter and understanding how slowing the shutter can drag stuff. Um, so I think having that structured scenario where where you were given an actual assignment, first of all, taught the lesson of like how it works, and then given an assignment so you can execute it. Like the only way stuff’s gonna stick, at least for me anyway, is executing it and practicing.

TMac 10:41
So you I think it was you are a you are a kinesthetic learner, you gotta have it in your hand. Yes, gotta feel it. And I’m like that way too. Yeah, they can talk about it all they want, but I’m like, I gotta see it. I gotta feel it. Yeah, yeah. Absolutely. All right, so O U. Um, you’re you have like a BFA in photography?

Cydney Scott 11:05
I have a black I have a blachelor’s.

TMac 11:08
A bachelor’s, a B L A.

Cydney Scott 11:11
I have a Bachelor of Science in Visual Communications from Oh, nice. Yeah, yeah. Got it.

TMac 11:17
Yeah, got it. So from there, then what? Um you gotta get a job.

Cydney Scott 11:22
Um from there I worked at a bagel shop where I was absolutely terrible. And I confuse people’s tops with bottoms in the toaster all the time. So people would get like an onion top and a blueberry bottom. And then um on my first job interview over the phone happened in the closet at the bagel shop. So I like snuck away to like get a job interview.

TMac 11:39
But wait, wait, wait. Phone call comes in, you’re like, I gotta go to the closet.

Cydney Scott 11:44
What was so weird is like I don’t remember if I would have had a flip phone at that time. This is ’99. Maybe flip phones existed. So I guess I would have gone to the closet and had a flip phone conversation with my first editor. I don’t remember, but I do remember that I was highly unprofessional at my bagel job. Anyway, okay, so I had that interview. Um, I got the job. My first job was at um a small newspaper called The Auburn Citizen in upstate New York. And uh yeah, that was that was my first job.

TMac 12:16
And that was formative years in the professional world, right? Digital.

Cydney Scott 12:22
Incredibly still film. Yeah, so it was filmed for like a year and a half, and then we switched over to digital, um, which was interesting because in those early years, I seem to recall that they would jam in the cold. I feel like maybe they struggled in the cold, like the batteries didn’t do great in the cold, which made like Friday night football even more of a nightmare than it already was because it was like farm fields and they didn’t have lights on their face. Don’t even get me started, it was crazy. So um, yeah, very formative. Um, it was a uh pretty rural community, and you had to produce images every single day. So it was massive uh driving around and finding people doing stuff and trying to like figure out how to make pictures every single day. And it was a really, really good exercise in working hard. Yeah, and uh it was great, yeah.

TMac 13:13
And it and intense every day, practicing every day, and I would imagine something different multiple times a day, right?

Cydney Scott 13:23
You going out on assignments that could vary from high school sports to yeah, I think it I think it probably did, but I think that was also one of the biggest challenges about it, too, is that being sort of a rural area, there wasn’t um diversity of people and there wasn’t like diversity of activities. There was a lot of farms, there was a lot of like high school sports. Um, so it was challenging that way because you had to like keep it a little different every day. Yeah, lots of cows.

TMac 13:55
Within the genres, you gotta try to come up with something creative.

Cydney Scott 13:58
Yeah, bring your character to school day was a big one. I actually really hated it because you’d have to go pretty far out to get the kids who had the tractors because the farms are pretty far out, and they went to school so early because the tractors moved so slow that to get to school on time they had to leave really. So it was an early day. I hated it, but anyway, it was like charming.

TMac 14:19
So in college, you learn things like compositional elements, but at the first gig, you apply that every day. Yeah, what uh I’m always fascinated by first jobs in the in in the industry that that people work because you also learn professionalism and uh and how professionals act, yeah, and then how I always watched the the veteran in my formative TV years, I was always watching the vets.

Cydney Scott 15:00
Yeah.

TMac 15:00
How did they behave in certain situations?

Cydney Scott 15:03
Yeah.

TMac 15:03
Is that the same in photography?

Cydney Scott 15:06
Yeah, it definitely is the same in photography at newspapers, except um I think the biggest challenge there is that you’re not always gonna find mentors in newspapers because it’s so competitive. Um, I had, yeah, I mean, I had, I think my first job, my editor was definitely um supportive and encouraging and mentor-like, but he didn’t shoot on a regular basis, so it wasn’t like I would shadow him. Um that said, I feel like going into my first newspaper job, I was handed the tools at school to like do pretty well. And I also had an internship under my belt. My first internship was at the Cleveland Plain Dealer, and so that was no small situation to be tossed into. Yeah.

TMac 15:50
And back in those back in those days, they had a full room of photographers that they don’t have now.

Cydney Scott 15:59
Yeah, I got my second full job, partially because Dave Green at the Cleveland Plain Dealer was was maybe on my resume or something, and they called him and and they were like, She’s the funniest person I’ve ever met. You have to hire her. And then, like a couple of months into the second job, they were like, They we were told you were funny. Like I was so stressed, I was like super serious and I was super stressed. So I was like, wasn’t funny. They’re like, We thought you were funny. I’m like, why am I here? Anyway, first job was super interesting, really challenging, a lot of work. Um really, really awesome because I think when you’re starting out and you’re working really, really hard, later on it becomes cake.

TMac 16:43
Did you also have a moment where you said itself, uh I can do this?

Cydney Scott 16:53
Yeah, it was like it was like two weeks ago. No, I’m just kidding. Um when I was 23, um, the National Press Photographers Association is a national organization. Um they do monthly clip competitions where you would send in clips into a competition and you would score every month, and it was split up. The country and the world, I think, is split up by regions. And when I was a professional for two years, I got photographer of the year for reason region two. And it was like, okay, that’s cool. I still still felt like I was not good enough. I mean, you know, all of us have imposter syndrome. It’s what keeps us going, though. It was again, it’s what keeps us like still moving. But dad told me early on, he’s like, well, that’s the thing about many careers, and certainly in a creative one, is that there are always going to be people that you are better than or stronger at in your field, and there’s always going to be somebody who’s better than you. And kind of the sooner you can adjust to that and be comfortable in your space, the better off you are. It was in there at the time before I was there.

TMac 18:00
Yeah, you learn to be comfortable on that spectrum.

Cydney Scott 18:03
Yeah.

TMac 18:03
Because I still, I mean, I’m not a working photographer like you, but I still shoot regularly. And I I just marvel at some of the working sports guys and shamelessly steal angles and and thoughts and where positioning. And I’m like, oh, I have tried that, right? So I’m sure that that’s okay. How long at the first gig? How do how does that transition to I mean, how long was I there?

Cydney Scott 18:36
Yeah, yeah, I was there three years, and I was ready to move on when I hit three years. Um it was a really interesting place to work. And then um, I took a part-time job at the uh the Palm Beach Post, and the Palm Beach Post at the time had 22 photographers, and they had a part-time position, and I was like, I have to go. There it was, it’s such a good staff. And I mean, at the time now it’s dwindled down, but it was such a good staff at the time uh that I knew I was like, I’m gonna learn from this. I have to go. I didn’t want to live in Florida, I knew it wasn’t my jam, but like in my field, I was acutely aware you have to go where the job is. Like, if you want to be a newspaper photographer, you have to go where the job is.

TMac 19:19
And where the people who are going to challenge you are.

Cydney Scott 19:23
Exactly.

TMac 19:24
That’s the benefit of the the next level.

Cydney Scott 19:28
Yeah. And I think I was part-time for six or nine months, and then I was full-time after that. They hired me on full-time, but yeah.

TMac 19:39
I don’t want to say more of the same, but you knew what to expect now.

Cydney Scott 19:46
Um I understood a little more about how newspapers ran. I understood the role of a photographer and the role of other people in a newsroom. Um, but I don’t know that anything can prepare you for like um having to have the emotional fortitude for being surrounded by people who are so incredibly good. And and that was really challenging. That was really challenging. And it was a competitive place. Like it was, I look back on it and man, they were just so awesome. But there wasn’t a lot of bringing you under their wing. You know, there wasn’t a lot of that. Um, there was, you know, quite a few times where I’d look at someone’s screen and go, oh, that’s amazing. How did you shoot that? And they would like change the subject, which nowadays I just can’t fathom doing that. Like that’s just not who I am, and it’s not the mindset I want to have. So that was educational for me. That was a really interesting experience. And I got a lot better.

TMac 20:46
Come on, man. That’s why I’m sitting here. I’m all about teaching.

Cydney Scott 20:50
Yeah.

TMac 20:50
Right? Yeah. Um, so how how long at the post?

Cydney Scott 20:55
Six and a half years.

TMac 20:56
Um wow, you stayed. I don’t recall that.

Cydney Scott 21:00
Yeah, it it was um, and it was challenging, you know. I mean, uh, there were sort of constant rumblings of layoffs, constantly. And um I really didn’t want to get another mid-sized job. I mean, I don’t have a problem with a mid-sized paper, but I knew to get a job in a mid-sized paper, I’d have to go somewhere in the country that I might not be that interested in, and I’d have to start over and make new friends again and so forth and so on. So I was really like reticent to do that. And I was a little, I didn’t know what else I was built for, but I wasn’t dying to be like ambulance chasing. I wasn’t dying to this, you know. I wanted to take beautiful photos and good photos and storytelling photos, but like the pressure of the competition of like it has to be the best all the time. I just, it wasn’t my jam. So they offered buyouts. They offered to anybody who had stayed there five years. And I thought, well, I can take a buyout and get a decent package, or I can. Skip the buyout and then get laid off in a year and not have to pass. So I’m just gonna do it. And it was scary because it was like I just went home to Boston.

TMac 22:09
What uh what year?

Cydney Scott 22:12
That was 2008.

TMac 22:14
And the reason I ask is uh trying to get a gauge of where the industry was, and so there were big fish swallowing a lot of smaller fish and then gutting staffs, basically.

Cydney Scott 22:31
Yep, yeah.

TMac 22:32
Um, so no thought to a larger market.

Cydney Scott 22:39
You know, um when I came back up north, I interviewed at the Providence Journal, and I was like, my heart is not in this. Like, you know, I remember talking with them and talking about like the passion they have for photography and specifically journalism, and we really need stories and we want like hard-hitting stuff. And I’m like, yeah, this just isn’t my jam. I don’t know. And it was weird because you really do identify with that career. You you identify, and I would I did feel really lost for a long time. I was like, Well, what am I? I am if I’m not this. So um I had to figure out what I was, and so there was a lot of like throwing things at the oh always photography. I knew photography was not gonna be walked away from, but in what capacity was I gonna do it?

TMac 23:22
So I um how does the opportunity at at BU come into the picture?

Cydney Scott 23:30
So um I was home for two years living with my parents. I was um teaching lessons, teaching like evening continuing ed classes. Um, I had started freelancing and doing weddings and family portrait work, and I had shot some at-home births, which if I could make a living doing that, I would 100% do it. It’s just babies are unpredictable. So, so that wasn’t gonna work. But um weddings.

TMac 23:56
Oh my gosh.

Cydney Scott 23:56
Oh, yeah, no, the wedding, the thing about the weddings that was interesting is it be it became very clear to me that like uh that like candid documentary wedding photography was in. So I was like, okay, cool. I don’t have to change the way I shoot. I can go and I can cover this event, an event, um, with a few other modifications, like portraits and details. Well, it was it was fine. I I stopped doing it because I didn’t love it anymore. And it was like once I had a full-time job at BU, well, you’re just taking work from other people who need it, so don’t do that.

TMac 24:27
I I tell I tell all the friends that I have that you went, I was just like, dude, I’ve shot the Olympics and the Super Bowl and the World Series, and there’s no pressure doing that, but I gotta face a bride.

Cydney Scott 24:39
Nothing yeah, I and for me it was always like, what if I get the flu? What if I car breaks down? What if I randomly break an arm? What if I start vomiting in the middle of the ceremony with no apparent reason? Like that stress alone, I was like, I’m not doing this anymore. This is ridiculous.

TMac 24:54
I was just worried about not getting the picture, but I I get what you’re saying.

Cydney Scott 24:59
Yeah, it was yeah, I didn’t like it.

TMac 25:01
So the job so they advertise?

Cydney Scott 25:04
So they advertise, yeah. And I had a applied for like jobs at hospitals and medical places, and you know, the you know, the globe and the herald, and they were just too saturated. There was just not not too many shooters and not enough work. So uh bought um Boston University advertised for a photographer in the marketing department, and I applied and it was like through monster.com or like one of these websites. And so I was like, you know, I I come from an era of sending a portfolio with like slides in it to an editor and then harassing that editor every two weeks. Did you get my portfolio? Do you have any questions for me? Do you want to talk about my work? Do you have my and then two weeks later doing the same thing? So I’m like, this is not working for me. So I figured out who my boss would be, and I sent her um like a play dumb email. Like I was like, Oh, I sent my um my my my advertising, I sent my application, but I wasn’t sure you got it. So I thought I’d like I totally knew it didn’t work that way. So I was like, I, you know, so I’m just gonna um I just wanted to touch base. Here’s my resume, and like, and immediately she she was like, I you’re on the list. And I think it was because she saw it. It wasn’t my stuff didn’t go through HR. Like she knew about it because she had it on her plate. So I’m glad I did that. I don’t know where I got that.

TMac 26:21
Well, on the body of work at that point spoke for it was decent, yeah. I had it in front of the right eyeballs, yeah. And there’s the lesson photographers figure out who the right eyeballs are, yeah. Yeah, how okay, so how did your because that’s a slightly, as you said, communication and marketing. So, how um did the journalistic chops help you in the job that you have now?

Cydney Scott 26:48
I think one of the major ways it it helped me is that early on in my work there, we were doing everything that anybody asked us to. So, like we you have multiple colleges within a university. And if uh uh if Barbara in um you know the finance department over at the College of Fine Arts is retiring and they want pictures at their little luncheon, they call us and we have to do it. And when you think about an entire university, like we need headshots, we need this event, someone’s having a baby shower, on top of shooting photos for BU Today, which is the online news and marketing site, providing images for all of the magazines that each college produces, as well as their websites.

TMac 27:29
Oh, I didn’t think of that.

Cydney Scott 27:31
And then all of the stock photography you need to do, all the portrait work you need to do. It was really grueling in the first few years because we were tasked with for beauty today, I could still shoot in a photojournalistic manner. But when we were doing stuff for the magazines, it was a little more magazine y. And so you’d have a little bit more art direction, and that was challenging for me. I didn’t like being told what to do. It took me a while to like understand that it was a little bit different. I mean, of course, I would do whatever they needed me to do, but I I struggled to understand why it was being done that way because I just wasn’t familiar with marketing, right?

Cydney Scott 28:04
I’m an artist.

Cydney Scott 28:06
I wasn’t quite that bad, but I was kind of like, what am I doing? I don’t understand. It took it took a little bit. I figured it out.

TMac 28:13
So, what type of shooting assignments do you get in a week? You’re shooting every day, you said. What kind of assignments are you?

Cydney Scott 28:22
Um, so last week I did a couple of studio portraits for um some women who are doing Parkinson’s research.

TMac 28:28
Um portrait work.

Cydney Scott 28:30
Yeah, there’s some portrait work happening. Um, I don’t do sports unless I want to. Um, athletics has their own team.

TMac 28:37
So most colleges do.

Cydney Scott 28:39
Yep. And um we will cover stuff going on in labs, science-related stuff. When people win awards, we will go and do portrait work of them. I’m often trying to get in classrooms to get just stock of class interaction, which is shockingly challenging because you don’t want to be distracting. Um, a lot of wandering campus to find students interacting and sort of talking to people to try and get story ideas. Um, Jacques Papin’s coming to comp campus next week. I’ll be photographing him. He’s like a regular here at BU. Um trying to think of what else of other stuff I’ve done recently. We we stay pretty busy and the variety is is nice. Yeah. It’s also nice to be at a point where I’m at a place where I can brainstorm with people and come up with ideas, and then once I had the idea, I can be like, I knew who I need to call to pick their brain about this, you know, because I’ve been here long enough that I know so many people.

TMac 29:40
Correct. You got peeps, yeah. Um so then that leads to okay, so assignment. Um so there’s an event type, portrait type. Um, so if you’ve got to cover an event, I can’t tell you how many people come to me and say, I have to cover X.

Cydney Scott 30:05
Okay.

TMac 30:06
So here’s your here’s what I want you to do. So assignment is X, it’s an event. So take me through from gearing up. Do you have a place at school where gear is stored, or are you packing school gear and then you’re free to come and go? Or is there a central place? So, so the first part from in my brain is gearing up for whatever it may be. So start there and then take me through when you walk away. What is the just for people that to understand cover event coverage?

Cydney Scott 30:47
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, for example, last week I went to cover um the opening of an art show of student work, and um I wear a belt pack, and in that belt pack is a 70 to 200, a 28 to 70, and a 16 to 35. I think that’s the right one. It’s a Nikon, the mirrorless Nikon, Nikon Z. And um, and one strobe, I make sure I have extra batteries for the strobe because sometimes they don’t last very long, and that’s it. Like all my gear is physically on my body. Um, and I show up and I shoot moments that tell the story of the evening. Is that answering your question? I’m not sure it is.

TMac 31:24
Well, uh I want to get into the weeds a little more. So you show up and tell me what you’re looking for.

Cydney Scott 31:32
Oh.

Cydney Scott 31:34
Well, in this instance, um, you know, people are looking at artwork. So I’m trying to get shots of people who are looking at the actual artwork. And then a lot of the other stuff was um people interacting in um sort of a cocktail hour scenario. So you want to get folks interacting with each other, but you don’t want them shoving food in their mouth. So that’s the thing you kind of keep an eye out for, that you’re not getting somebody like actively shoveling it in, but like interacting with other people. Um obviously, I’m looking for nice expression. I’m trying to avoid too many backs to me, like if they’re sitting in a standing in a circle, dog has which they typically are. Yep.

TMac 32:13
Some sometimes you can buy a little shoulder out of focus or this and and somebody Yeah.

Cydney Scott 32:19
I mean, I shoot through all the time, and I often have people’s backs because if you want shots of everybody in that group, I’m not a photographer who’s gonna grab people and be like, hey, can you turn around and pose for me in a in a group shot? Now, quite honestly, the people who hired me to cover that event would probably love to have those, but it’s so not a habit of mine that unless they ask me specifically to like, can you get clusters of people together?

TMac 32:44
And even then, I have to like remind myself to do it because I I know, but it’s the candidates are so much better.

Cydney Scott 32:52
They can be, yeah, yeah, for sure. Um, yeah, so that was that scenario. And and it was challenging too, because after that, everybody sort of sat in an audience and each student got up and talked about their work, and they were at a podium, and podium shots are never very interesting, and the light was challenging. And um, so that particular scenario, as far as an event, um, from there, I went to another event that was freelance in a really dark restaurant, um, which they let me bounce light in. Um, and that was another challenging scenario because you’re it’s a it was a tight space, and it’s again, people socializing, you’re trying to get nice shots of people, and then they’re sitting down and you’re trying not to get them eating. But when I’m in a scenario like that, I will um, it was an event for um the author who wrote the hours. His name is Michael Cunningham. And so his books were on display. I made sure to get a detail of his books, I made sure to get like details of the menu which was put out, of some of the name tags. So when I’m covering an event for a client, I make sure that the ambiance is covered as well, not just a bunch of people in space, if that makes sense.

TMac 33:53
And also your journalism showing, you’re gathering the information for later, captioning, just understanding what what what it was that you were dealing with. So you mentioned uh oversized fanny pack. Um one body, two bodies. One you’ve got your wide, medium, long gish lens. One body.

Cydney Scott 34:19
Yeah.

TMac 34:20
Are you a a walk in lens changer?

Cydney Scott 34:23
Yes.

TMac 34:24
Yeah.

Cydney Scott 34:24
My whole life. I’ve never had two cameras. I used to like I just I don’t know.

TMac 34:31
It’s not my well, some of my students just for stuff to bang on things. Yeah. Well, and part of me is like wanting them to be safe with very valuable equipment in the program. And the other is to say, no, you gotta kind of walk, take one off, goes in a bag, cap under your, you know, there’s all these techniques that to make a lens change.

Cydney Scott 34:53
Well, not for two, but an icon Z is what nine thousand dollars? So I’m gonna carry two of them, and I can’t carry another like my previous camera because the lenses don’t match, and the batteries are different, and one of them’s loud and one of them’s not.

TMac 35:08
Like it’s yeah, it’s not uh uh well. I gotta say that the the mirrorless and the quiet shooting is worth worth it for it really, really is.

Cydney Scott 35:19
It really, really is. I um I really love it for being in classes because it’s so much less distracting to the students, I think.

TMac 35:26
Yeah, yeah, especially for that type of work where they’re not moving fast, and I can use electronic shutter and not have to worry about even a sound.

Cydney Scott 35:38
Yep.

TMac 35:38
It’s a beautiful thing, it’s really nice. So, other than those uh one body, three lenses, uh some brick a brac in the in the bag, um any other any other must-haves?

Cydney Scott 35:55
So, I mean, every once in a while I’ll push myself and bring out a tripod and put a light on it and use a transmitter or a radio transmitter. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, but um I I mean I’d argue that I’m lazy and I just I don’t like to do it. I mean, uh quite honestly, you get the nicest look with an umbrella, and if you’re outside, it’s gonna fall over, like the wind’s gonna catch it, and it’s just like and depending on how many people are around, somebody will hook a foot onto it.

TMac 36:24
And yeah, I totally so um I’m a real available light person, even though I I really should push myself harder to bring in some well, in your defense, you are doing portrait stuff, so you are doing your fair share of lighting, correct?

Cydney Scott 36:44
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, I am. I am now.

TMac 36:47
Do you have a space specifically?

Cydney Scott 36:49
We do, we have a studio on our on our floor, yeah. Yeah, big, small, it’s a pretty good size. Um, it’s absolutely an absolute mess. So it could be bigger if we were more organized, but yeah, there’s like giant stands with wheels and stuff over your head and gels and piles, and it’s an artist’s face.

TMac 37:11
Talk me through your post-production tools.

Cydney Scott 37:13
So um I have a desktop at work with some monitors. And um, you know, I’ll do if I’m on campus Wednesday, Thursday, Friday are my on-campus days. So if I’m processing in the office, I’ll I’ll process there using Lightroom. I I never take it into Photoshop. I always do everything in Lightroom. Sorry, it starts in Photomechanic, and that’s where I put all the metadata in so that there’s a caption and my identification is in there. Photomechanic. Yeah, I love photo mechanics and I I hear lots of great things about it. I love it. And then um I use that to edit down what I want to actually submit at the end of the day. And then I pull it. Mm-hmm. Yeah.

TMac 37:53
So you’re you’re calling images.

Cydney Scott 37:55
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And so I don’t use Lightroom for that. I use photo mechanics and then from photo mechanics I pull it in the Lightroom, I do the job, I export it, and then it goes onto a server. When I am at home, I’m using the laptop that I’m talking to you on with a monitor up in my room or up in my office upstairs. And it’s sort of the same routine. Um, really, the biggest challenge is that I don’t have all the same work on this laptop that I do at work, and that becomes a problem because it really, I really wish it mirrored, it just doesn’t. So we have a server and I’ll move stuff over there to the server.

TMac 38:26
Can you hit that server from home? I can. Is that like an FTP kind of thing?

Cydney Scott 38:32
Yeah.

TMac 38:32
Oh, that’s awesome. Um, so this this school event that you did, the art, uh, the art event, what’s your turnaround time for that? When do you have to have FTP final? Yeah, Sydney’s happy about the set.

Cydney Scott 38:50
That event today is Tuesday. That event was Wednesday. I just turned it in this afternoon. That is really slow for me. Really slow. Like I usually turn everything around within 24 hours. It’s just the newspaper habit, and it’s not necessary here, but I can’t break it. I’ve been here 13 years and I still can’t, I still can’t like chill about turning.

TMac 39:15
Well, the clock in your head’s starting to berm, berm, go away, yeah.

Cydney Scott 39:19
And it’s um it’s like muscle memory. You should something you turn it around. People are waiting on them. You do the job.

TMac 39:26
And um at at said art event, give me throw out some numbers. So raw number of images was what? Roughly, you don’t have to give me an exact number.

Cydney Scott 39:42
I’m gonna look it up because I I never I never look, but it’s literally right after me, so I can look it up for you. Um let’s see November.

TMac 39:52
Um And then while you’re while you’re doing that, then ultimately what got uh flung up to the server.

Cydney Scott 40:04
So I shot 730 frames and I submitted 49.

TMac 40:15
Yeah.

Cydney Scott 40:16
Yeah, there’s no there’s no need to like yeah.

TMac 40:21
There’s a brutality that you develop of of going, uh no, that didn’t work.

Cydney Scott 40:27
And and in the in the moment too of like recognizing when you’re shooting that like yeah, yeah, yeah. No.

TMac 40:34
Are do you uh Z9 can mark in camera, right? Are you are you marking in camera?

Cydney Scott 40:42
Very rarely. So the times that I will put a lock or put a key on one of them is when I’m uh photographing like a trustee or someone in um sort of upper management, if they want to look at the photos and they say, I like that one, I like that one, and I’ll mark them so that I know for sure that I that I but that’s the only circumstance I’ll do it. I’ll delete stuff in real time, but I I don’t lock stuff.

TMac 41:08
Yeah, right. Yeah, so seven something to 40 something. I found that to be the hardest thing to talk to students about. And there is a emotional I’m like, don’t marry the images, yeah, but you’ll make more. You know, did you get what you needed to get? Clearly, you know that walking out. I I’m already kind of in my head going, yeah, I got that, I got that, I got that. Did I get that? Right. And I I just it’s uh it’s an interesting thing in the post-production of images of you know, they want to look through, and I’m trying to teach them speed. Um, versus too many.

Cydney Scott 41:58
And I think in sort of the marketing leaning field that I’m in, um, they want looser edits, they want more options. Um, and so I’ve become better at being looser with the edits, but early on it was like, well, this isn’t adding to the story and it’s weakening the overall collection by you know, leaving these three or five images and if I get rid of them, wow, that’s a really great collection of photos, but it’s not totally what the client needs, so yeah, you adapt.

TMac 42:30
Yeah, and that’s a learned skill. Yeah. Um, do you uh I’m sure in Lightroom you’re doing a color correction. Are you cropping? I am, or do you let them crop? They don’t they want to use them, they don’t have time.

Cydney Scott 42:51
So for for um for the BU today for the online news and marketing, uh, they don’t crop our images generally. Um, and then when our photos end up in magazines and stuff, they might crop them, but we’re actually really lucky because a lot of the designers are just really good and we’re never gonna, it’s really rare that I’ll see a photo and be like, oh, what did you do to my picture? Now that might be that might be like experience where I’m like, oh, you cropped it. Cool. What am I doing next? You don’t, you just don’t care as much. But um, I’m very lucky to be surrounded by people who are really good with design and visuals. But so yes, I’ll do some cropping. One of the major things I do is um adjust my horizons because they’re always crooked. And when I was at OU, Marcy Nice Wander was like, keep your horizons straight because when you’re crooked, it seems like you’re trying to be like artistic, but really you’re just like not capturing the moment. Like the photo’s not good enough. You’re just turning to make it look artsy.

TMac 43:48
You you weren’t paying attention. Yeah. You know, it it you know, sports is sports is big on that because there’s a lot of angling of people diving or whatever, but you still have to. Yeah. Make sure that your horizon is level. Yep.

Cydney Scott 44:05
Yep. So that’s one of the major things. Um, I have to remove a lot of dust. There’s like a lot of dust in my camera, which is a little bit weird because the mirrorless is really new. I don’t know what that’s about. I have to deal with that. Um, no to have the thing clear.

TMac 44:20
Um your plucking mask. Yeah.

Cydney Scott 44:24
Yeah. Wow. And then um that’s kind of it. We don’t, I I personally I don’t remove objects um from any of those images because I’m still such a stickler for journalists. Um yeah, still kind of a stickler for them.

TMac 44:40
Do you uh do you have presets or are you just white balance?

Cydney Scott 44:47
Um no, I I have no presets. Um I will I use the dropper on gray areas or white areas to try and get the white balance, and then I’ll make adjustments. I mean, I think after doing it for so long, you’re like, this needs a little bit of magenda for everybody to not look so weird.

TMac 45:03
Um, yeah. You’re in a lot of badly lit or you know, uh big buildings, it’s a lot of LED, fluorescent, older orange. So you’re probably like, I gotta take some of that.

Cydney Scott 45:19
My colleague Jackie is way better at it than I am. Whenever we’re we’re doing some kind of presentation, which we have to do next week, um, and I see her images, I’m like, man, I gotta take like light room lessons from her. Because mine look like muddy next to hers, and hers are always like really bright and contrasty. And so I feel like there’s always like room to learn, no matter how long you’ve been at it. So it’s even now something that I’m still tackling is like being better at the post-production part.

TMac 45:48
I I have learned uh recently within the last few years, the fine art of highlights and shadows, and and I mean, we did that in the soup bin, we just did it a different way. Yeah, and and now, you know, just playing with those and um bringing up sometimes a shadow, even just a little on a face, is amazing.

Cydney Scott 46:14
Yeah, and Lightroom also allows you to now select subjects, select sky, select background, um, which I struggle with a little bit. I don’t like to mess with that too much. Um because it just really feels like cheating. I mean, that’s really AI, that’s really bringing in AI. So I try to be cool about it. Totally is. Um, but it can be a little bit tricky because what you remember seeing with your eye is what you can make happen in Lightroom now. Whereas before you might be able to like get it looking the best you can, but you’re like, it’s not quite what it looked like to my eye, but you just couldn’t get there. Um, and now with Lightroom, you can kind of take it even beyond what you saw with your eye. Yeah.

TMac 46:57
And yeah, you can. Well, that’s not really what the world looks like, but I will uh full disclosure, I will separate the background on the subject and work. Uh, and it’s mostly because most high school, I typically do the majority of my shooting for my district. Um I I’m constantly and badly lit. Like I shot the play this week, um, which was great, but I was dealing with some flicker, I was dealing with some, you know, way too much red uh just in how they were lighting. And I, you know, I tweaked. I actually went to single shot because I was getting banding across um almost like uh and I wasn’t in electronic shutter, but I was getting a banding from the shutter and just went to single shot because I can you know squeeze it off and not have the multiple shutters, which uh exposures, I mean. So anyway, I I I’m still learning, but it’s all driven by how good or bad the light is.

Cydney Scott 48:14
It really is, yeah.

TMac 48:17
All right, so if you were going to advise, so if you were not caring about the competition, and we talked about it earlier, advising first year, second year photographers, what are some tips that you would give them as they start out?

Cydney Scott 48:42
Yeah, so when it comes to events, go early and stay late. Um, it’s really, really important. Like some of the best images are gonna be from before or after an event. Go early, stay late. And students that I’ve worked with now don’t do that. They just, it’s not a thing. So go early, stay late. Um I would say that it’s really smart to um sort of sit quietly and observe a space for a while. Um, if I was to walk into the dining hall at BU, um, I’m just gonna stand there and I’m gonna wait and I’m gonna see who’s interacting with their friend or like, you know, where that’s happening before I just start running around taking pictures of people doing boring stuff who are not in an interesting space compositionally. So observe and um work a scenario. Like if I go to BU Beach, which is ironically a lawn, right? If I go to BU Beach on the lawn and there are like pods of students hanging out and doing stuff, if I pick one, like hang out there for a while. Um, shoot from different angles, shoot from up high, get way down low, shoot over one of their shoulders, shoot from behind one, talking to the other to get the other one’s face, get both, you know, get them within the broader space, you know. Um, I think we learn a lot by moving around and figuring out like even even now, I’m still like doing something, being like, oh that wow, that actually worked. That’s cool. That’s like a little bit different than I haven’t from that angle before.

TMac 50:15
Yeah, zoom with your feet, come on, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Cydney Scott 50:18
For sure, for sure. Get closer, closer, closer. Yeah. Um, and be quiet. Like, just shut up. Like, don’t you know. Um, your body language, I think, is really important. Like, just chill, be calm, slow, slow down. Like, if you have a frenetic energy, if you have a nervous energy, you’re gonna make your subjects nervous. So do the best you can to fake it till you make it if you’re nervous. If you’re nervous and you’re and you’re really worried, act like you’ve been doing it for decades. Yep. Just like I know what I’m doing. Even if you have no idea and all your pictures are terrible, act like this is a pulitzer. But don’t be arrogant, don’t be compositing.

TMac 51:04
There and sometimes there’s a patience, like you can see that that group is animated, but you’re waiting for a moment. You you’ve you’ve seen it once, like I I’ve done this where I’ve seen that laugh, and I’m like, there’s gonna be another one. That person’s gonna laugh in that conversation, and I’m just I’m waiting to strike, and um, sometimes I’ll look away and come back to it and and just um okay, it’s stalking.

Cydney Scott 51:39
But my point is No, but they know you’re there, so it’s not, you know, correct these are people you approached and you’ve said, Can I hang out and take your picture? And that’s very different. I mean, I think um yeah, one of the interesting things about mirrorless is it’s so quiet. And I would swear that when my camera used to chunk, chunk really loud, that without realizing it, you were training people that you were photographing because I’d be photographing them and they’d laugh and they’d hear me ch-chunk. And whether they consciously realize it or not, they’d realize she wants me laughing and they would interact more. I swear. However, yeah, if you’re talking about the scenario where they see my you you you can get a sense from people about whether they’re super conscious of you, get a long lens and back away. Give them space. Let them just say, I’m gonna hang out, just try and ignore me for a while. That’s I say that to people constantly, and I’ll shoot from far away, and then I’ll come in with a wider lens and I will I will say to them, I’m gonna crowd you for a minute. I don’t even say I hope you don’t mind, I’m just gonna say I’m gonna crowd you real quick. And I’ll get it with a tighter lens to get some variety.

TMac 52:39
Um, some of that for me comes from the television work because uh, you know, please ignore us. We’re used to it. It’s okay. We don’t mind being ignored. We have to um that’s sort of the straight up, but the other part is as you say, just just slow down and don’t make them become comfortable that you’re there. Then you can start to work.

Cydney Scott 53:05
Yeah. I had a family photo session a couple weekends ago, and at the end of the session, the little boy is maybe like nine or 10. As we were walking back to their car, he was like, that was actually pretty fun. And um I still am sort of surprised when people are like, Oh, that was fun, or like you can tell when you’re done photographing them and you’re getting your their names that they were like really like excited that you took their picture. And I you get so used to doing it that you don’t think about the fact that like maybe they’ll actually like it. Like maybe they’ll get a kick out of it and they’ll enjoy it and you’ll brighten their day. And that’s not bad either.

TMac 53:42
That’s high praise from a nine-year-old.

Cydney Scott 53:44
Uh, it was huge. Honestly, I was like, that’s what I aim for. Like, as little painless, as painless as possible, makes me very happy, made me really happy that he said that.

TMac 53:54
What’s uh last question? What’s next?

Cydney Scott 53:58
Um, that’s a really good question. What’s next? Well, with the holidays coming, it’s currently right before Thanksgiving as we’re recording this, and there’s like a lot of gatherings and a lot of parties and a lot of, so it’s hard to not be a slacker around the holidays at BU because you can kind of get away with it. We still work really hard, we still do, but there is sort of um an air about the time of year. But um, let’s see. One of my most recent stories over the summer was to find as many pets that were coming to campus as possible and do photos of them.

TMac 54:38
What a great story.

Cydney Scott 54:40
I was wandering around and I noticed in one building, I’m like, there’s a lot of dogs in these offices, right? So I went to them, I was like, What’s the deal? Oh, yeah, we have a lot of, we bring a lot of our dogs to school. And so I got in touch with um HR and I was like, is this a thing? Is it allowed? And they were like, Yeah, there’s nothing in the handbook that says you can’t bring a pet to work. So we did a what we call a call out, which is on view today. We’re like, hey, are you bringing your pets to campus? Like, is this something you do?

TMac 55:03
Talk to us.

Cydney Scott 55:04
And for yeah, and for the summer, I like went around and photographed people with their dogs and their puppies, and one woman had a cat, and like, and it was an absolute blast. So, like, as far as the reason I’m saying that is because what’s next for me is I’m always looking for fun stories like that to tell. People loved that story. And then my colleague was like, I’m seeing more animals on campus because I think people are like, oh, wait, I can bring my dog to school. Um, we have a really interesting section of the College of Fine Arts where um grad students have um their own gallery to work in. It’s very small, and there’s sort of like a warehouse of them. And one of my colleagues and I want to do a story on that. And so I’m really looking forward to that because that’s the kind of thing where you can shoot moments of students who have bonded as a result of working in these spaces together. What do they do if they do hang out with each other? What do they do? What are they doing in their individual spaces? Are they there in the middle of the night? Are they there in the middle of the day? So I’m interested to tell that story next.

TMac 56:09
So these are enterprise stories uh in the larger context of the university.

Cydney Scott 56:15
Yeah. It’s one of the really great things about the job is that all I have to do is like see something and be like, I want to learn more about that. I mean, I’m gonna figure out how to photograph dogs all summer. And that’s exactly what I did.

TMac 56:30
And speak I and speaking of, yeah, how is that? How was that?

Cydney Scott 56:35
The dogs?

TMac 56:36
Yeah.

Cydney Scott 56:36
Uh it was great. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was it was a really it was a really cool project. I really enjoyed it. A lot of people had puppies, and and actually that made sense because if if you had you’re less likely to bring your older dog to work than you are a puppy who needs to go out a lot. So if your school is allowing you to bring a puppy. I also did um a general one about pets um years ago, and I got to photograph um geckos and one dude was obsessed with snails and like a gerbil, a hedgehog who wore hats. Like it was just it was super fun. Like you just come up with an idea and snails. Yeah, it was interesting. He was very aquarium full of snails, a huge aquarium, probably multiples. I don’t remember. It was a while ago, but yeah. I did a story about BU at night, an editor of that idea. So it was like what happens at BU between 10 p.m. and 2 a.m. And that was not a scenario where you’re wandering around looking for parties, it’s very calculated. You get a hold of the biology lab and say, Are there any science research projects going on in the middle of the night? You find that specific kid and you photograph them doing that thing. Uh, you call the facilities department. Does anybody mop the floor at Marsh Chapel? Yeah, there’s so and so. He does it at midnight. You go at midnight and you photograph so-and-so. So it was very calculated and planned, but it was so awesome because there was no traffic when I would like come in to school work and leave again because it was the middle of the night. It was interesting, it was like challenging to do. Um, I had to get into the dorms, and like technically, I’m supposed to like do that in a special way. And so I went into one of the dorms and there was a pizza guy, and I’m like, well, someone’s gonna get that pizza. And so the student came down to get the pizza, and I was like, Hey, I’m Sydney, I’m doing this project, and I come upstairs with you. Like, sure. So I that’s I was a guest, so I went in and I got great shots inside the dorm and found contacts inside the dorm.

TMac 58:33
So well, Sydney Scott, Harlow didn’t make an experience, uh, an appearance.

Cydney Scott 58:39
She did, she was under the frame. I was like petting her.

TMac 58:42
Uh, okay. Fine. I can’t thank you enough for being a part of the project.

Cydney Scott 58:49
Thank you for having me. This is great.

TMac 58:52
See you soon.

Cydney Scott 58:53
Yes, you will, I hope.

TMac 59:03
Thanks again to the amazingly talented and yes, hilarious, Sydney Scott. You can check out her portfolio and more at Sydnescott.com and on all of her social media channels. The Zoom With Our Feet Podcast is a production of TV Commando Media. Be sure to take a peek at the blog and other episodes of the Zoom Pod at zoomwithourfeet.com. The Zoom Pod theme is by November’s and their funky groove Cloud 10. Until next time, photographers, if you’re not shooting, you’re not learning.