Nicola Suttle selected by one of World’s Top Photographers for Photography Training Course

We received the following bit of news about Nicola (2010 Head of School) from Cindy Suttle:

Nicola Suttle ~ photograph taken by Jeff Bergen

Nicola continually keeps me on my toes & no doubt will never fit into any box. At the end of December, just before we went on holiday, she (at the very last minute – literally at 11.45pm – deadline being midnight) applied to do a photographic boot camp from the 3rd to 17th January with a man named Yuri Arcurs. He is meant to be the “top stock photographer” in the world. He is Scandinavian, but his company is based in Cape Town.

This “boot camp” offered to train a selected number of applicants (about 120 – out of the over 600 who applied worldwide) – with the idea being that he’d take the top 12 or so & offer them a 3-year training programme (which includes exams) – &  they will thus end up with a Diploma of sorts. The sort of things that they are tested on over the years are: the technical skills required to use certain top cameras; video recording and editing.; basic and advanced photo-shopping; advanced digital image theory; shoot planning and execution planning; creative research, invoicing; legal aspects & so forth. Almost all basic costs of the training are covered, including travel, food & accommodation.

Nicola LOVED the course. It was very demanding – one assignment last week started at 5pm & ended at 3am. She ended up 2nd overall. As a result, she has been made a firm offer to work with Yuri for 3 years as he trains her further. It looks as though she is going to accept this offer. She is so excited about the opportunity & was so on fire about the experience, that we think she is following her passion. In the end, it is best to love what one does & it is an incredible achievement & opportunity. She will be based in Cape Town, but they do travel a lot. The first port of call is Denmark in July. She would begin to work for him on 1st Feb. We are still in a state of shock as to all of this as it is a 180 degree turn from where we all thought she was headed – & it came about on we thought was a whim so to speak! She is the youngest of the achievers – the others were on average about 23/24 years old & had mostly done some photography courses/diplomas or degrees.

She still needs to sign on the dotted line. We are waiting to see the final contract – but what has verbally been said to her sounds reasonable. It will be 3 years of hard work, with (it seems) no time to fit in extra studies on the side lines. She will be overseas for about 4 months of each year & is guaranteed a minimum of 3 weeks leave a year – 2 being over Christmas – & often 2 weeks in June. In some ways it sounds like a once in a lifetime opportunity & maybe it is. At the end of it all – he has said that he would then want to employ them, as he (& his sponsors) would have invested so much into them already. They, in fact, would need to work for him as salaried employees for another 3 years or so until they have worked off their “student loan”.

Although she did well at Stellenbosch University last year, it looks as though we are set on a new course with her in 2012!