The holiday season means lots of things to different people. The winter months often bring together relatives and friends who haven’t seen each other throughout the year, and retailers provide popular gifts and ideas for shoppers. For others, the season means opportunity in the form of temporary work to boost income. If you are in need of extra cash to buy gifts or pay off bills, this time of year is a good time to pick up the extra hours.

Seasonal Temp Work: Who’s Hiring?

One will assume the only holiday jobs are to be had in retail. While it’s true that the heavy shopping reason requires extra help to stock shelves, price orders, and assist shoppers, it’s not the only opportunity in town. Depending on your skills set, you’ll find a variety of temporary positions available from November through January.

Clerical Work: The end of the year for many companies usually means getting year-end reports and paperwork together. Some businesses will hire on extra hands to file and type, so if customer service isn’t your forte check with a temp agency for vacancies.

Finance and Accounting: Hand in hand with clerical work, some businesses may require supplemental help in reconciling end of year invoices, bills, and expenses.

Inventory Control: Warehouses tend to get busy around the holidays with the constant to and fro of materials from various vendors. Some may take on extra work to help keep the inventory records square.

Pet Care: As people travel over Christmas and New Year’s, you might see a rise in business for kennels and pet care businesses. If you’re good with animals, check to see if any local kennels or pet hotels are hiring extra hands.

If you know where to look, you can find a good temporary job to get you through the holiday season.

Kathryn Lively is a freelance writer specializing in articles on Internet time clocks and Microsoft Dynamics consultants.

Too many people have the idea that being paid to take
photographs of exotic places is the ideal job. It may take years
of effort to be paid by magazines such as the National
Geographic, but are there better ways to become a travel
photographer. As most people have more leisure time, more
holiday time, and more disposable income, the demand for travel
photographs has increased dramatically. Not only are they in
demand for travel brochures, but they’re also used extensively
in other advertising copy.

Images necessary for sale and publication require rather more
skill than those applied to standard holiday snaps. “The real
voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but
in having new eyes.” Was a quote by the French novelist Marcel
Proust, and it appears to be of particular use to the travel
photographer.

Investigate the possibilities of becoming a contracted
photographer at Lonely Planet Images. Lonely Planet Images is a
digital library of travel photography. They have submission
guidelines available for download at their website. They are a
subsidiary of what used to known as the Lonely Planet Guide, and
currently have 400 photographers on contract. You can also
increase your chances of breaking into the very lucrative travel
market, by entering competitions such as the Travel photographer
of the Year . There closing date for submissions is September
5th 2005.

A camera is merely a box, that captures light, and in a studio,
it is very easy to manipulate light. The reality of location
photography is that it is generally expensive; you have the
expenses of air tickets, hotels and meals on top of normal
expenses. At the end of the day you are at the mercy of
“weather”, no one wants to see their ideal location subject to
rain clouds.

When we talk of light in terms of travel photography we are
talking about intensity, as most travel shots are taken
outdoors, In general there is harsh direct sunlight and diffused
soft light. Harsh light is when the sun is directional, and it
is great for capturing deep contrasts between light and shadows.
With this type of shot, it is difficult to judge the exposure.
If you direct your exposure towards the light, that will leave
your shadows without any depth or definition. Conversely if you
use the correct exposure for shadow, then the light areas will
be without detail, giving a vaguely sinister result to the
image. Unfortunately your drawback here is film, the human eye
is capable of registering contrast to a ratio of 800:1, slide
film is capable of only 30:1, which is slightly improved, by
going digital at a ratio of 40:1. Professional photographs have
all passionate views on their favourite brand name of film in
this situation, but they are all in accord that you need a
slower speed films, as they record better contrast and grain.
ISO/ASA rating of a hundred is about the fastest film to use. It
is important that you use a good photovoltaic cell (either a
separate light meter or one inbuilt into the camera). Once the
light meter has registered the light, the camera is capable of
indicating the aperture opening required, and the shutter speed.
The speed of the film is also taken into this equation. You need
to measure the darkest and the lightest areas.

Your immediate decision is whether to correctly expose the dark
and emphasize the shadow and leave the light areas washed out or
to correctly expose the light and leave the shadows without
definition. Using light correctly greatly enhances your colors,
the diffused lighting just after and dawn and just before sunset
is helpful here. The technical reasons for this are simple when
the sun is nearest to the horizon; the light has a greater
distance to travel through pollution, ozone, water vapour and
dust. This means that wavelengths at the violet end of the
spectrum are more scattered, than the colours at the red end.
This allows the blues to absorb more colour than at the red end,
so the sunlight appears more golden. To study the more technical
aspect of lighting, you may like to take an online course.

An inexpensive, but invaluable tool for the outdoor photographer
is a polarizer, as they improve the ambient lighting. They will
always emphasise the blue of the sky, whilst minimalizing glare.
This will allow you to capture the colors you want to make a
saleable photograph. More importantly it reduces the contrast in
a photograph by creating a more even tone, it restricts the very
much lighter and darker tones, in the image. Mike Johnston gives
an excellent technical explanation of this in his excellent
online course. He has also written an excellent tutorial on
color theory, which explains the use of color to improve the
quality of your outdoor images. Photographers who use digital
imaging will also find this article tremendously helpful in
enplaning how to improve the final image with regard to colour.

Research is a great tool for the travel photographer, and the
Internet is a great help, but don’t forget to use local
knowledge, ask local taxi drivers, as well as the tourist boards
for inside information on a location. City photography is also
included in the aspect of travel photography and here taxi
drivers’ knowledge can be invaluable. You can also try and
coincide a trip with local festivals. If you can oversee a
vantage point you can use a zoom lens to great effect without
the embarrassment of having to foist a camera into someone’s
face. Also local festivals give opportunities to capture a part
of the local culture.