Gusenbauer at Brown
By Hayden James
It was a normal day and I had just finished working in the college cafeteria when I received a phone call from a friend at the student newspaper. He told me that he had gotten a call a few minutes before from a man who needed a photographer for a photo shoot for the next day. I asked for the man’s number and planned to politely reject the offer. I didn’t want the job because I thought it would be like any of the other photography jobs from the student newspaper and it can be repetitive and draining.
I called the man that afternoon and he introduced himself as Herbert Bauernebel. He said that he would need a photographer for the next day to do a photo shoot at Brown. I got interested fast. I had no idea what I was doing until I met Bauernebel at Brown and he introduced himself again, but this time as a correspondent in NYC for the Osterreich Newspaper in Vienna, Austria.
He asked me if I worked for the “paper” and I did some quick thinking, made a decision, and said “yes, I work for the paper, as well as the college public relations office”. I was very surprised and I assumed he had thought he was calling an actual newspaper the day before. I decided not to tell him I was a student and said to myself “oh what the hell” and went with it.
It was during this introduction that I was told that I would be following Bauernebel as he toured the Brown University campus and interviewed Ex- Chancellor of Austria Alfred Gusenbauer. I was very excited but made a conscious decision to act like I knew what I was doing as best I could and to pretend that it was nothing special.
I spent the better part of four hours working with them taking posed and candid shots. When it was all said and done and the final interview was concluded Bauernebel and I walked back to Thayer St. where all the shops are and he offered to buy me something as we looked over the photos. I let him buy me a coffee and we took a seat and looked it all over. He was very pleased with the photos and marked a few that he wanted me to send him. It was in our final exchange of business cards, after he made it clear that he was happy with the work, that I strategically wrote my information on the back of one of the generic Rhode Island College Anchor Newspaper card and handed it to him. He didn’t act to surprised but said “oh you from the student newspaper” and I said “yes, I am also an intern at the RIC News and Public Relations Office” I told him I would be happy to work with him in the future should he find himself in the Providence area again and we went out separate ways.
This was a very lucky break and my first professional job. Getting the photos to Bauernebel was another story altogether that I’ll elaborate on soon in an update of this post. Thank you for reading this and please let me know what you think!
