Since photographers can always use great assistants, I thought I’d interview my main first assistant, Justin and share some tips on what makes a good assistant, and a little on how to get started in the world of assisting. I will say, when hiring first assistants the biggest thing I look for is attitude, a can-do, hard working, figure it out attitude. Assistants who are excited to work with you, have the technical knowledge and experience to figure out what what works best for the light I want in the location that we’re shooting. This takes an attitude to go with the flow. Lighting on a big Advertising production is like a puzzle you have to put together under a time line, which can be high pressure. Having the right attitude is key to everything flowing smoothly. Here are some thoughts from an experience first assistant:

NO: What photographers have you worked for?
Justin: In order to be more informative and give better stories, I’d prefer to keep the names of the photographers anonymous. But, my background is from the perspective of a photo school graduate now working as a LA based photo assistant on advertising, editorial, and catalog jobs for the past six years. Subject wise, I work mostly in the realm of lifestyle, fashion, car and music photography.

I have worked with the whole gamut: cultural icon photographers like Dewey Nicks, shooters larger than their subjects, all the way down to assisting for assistants doing tests. (Which isn’t that low, I’d say assisting on playboy shoots is probably the lowest. The hours are usually 10am till 2am, and the rate sucks but they think they are doing you a solid by getting to see a naked woman all day…. oh, and there isn’t any crafty so always have a cliff bar or two in your car while you are cutting your teeth in the first few years of assisting.)

NO: How did you get started assisting?
Justin: I got my start assisting in a rather bizarre way. I had interned for a huge photographer which wasn’t a waste of time but wasn’t a way to move up, because on that level, interns are seen as janitors and that’s it. If you kiss ass then you are just an ass-kissing intern, your best bet in that situation is just to take notes about how they conduct business and on-set etiquette.

So back when Flash was cool, I managed to learn enough of it to make websites, which I used to stay afloat while interning for a guy who was starting a digital tech company. He knew that I wanted to assist and one day asked if I would work for $100/day and I jumped at the chance. The photographer from that job ended up calling me again for work because he saw how hard I worked and how excited I was to be there.

NO: How did you learn to light?
Justin: A lot of people I know credit assisting with 100% of their lighting knowledge, but they went to different schools than I. I think if you learn 100% on the job then you only end up using the lights that the photographers you work for use…. This is how you get a lot of shooters who only know what a beauty dish with an Elinchrome looks like. I’m fortunately or unfortunately in what I call the “Ferrari student loan” club, and fortunately my super dry technical school in California taught me about 80% theory wise of what I use today. Assisting teaches you the tricks of the trade and special ways to manipulate and create new and different things.

NO: What do you think is the best way to start out as an assistant first of all in a big market like LA or NY?
Justin: I can’t really speak for NY because it is a completely different atmosphere, but would think the general idea is similar to LA. The best way to start in LA is if you know the gear and want to show people you can work hard, work for nothing as an assistant (NOT a PA or intern.) Do the free thing only a few times and you’ll eventually meet some good guys you click with. All the guys I know would be very glad to help a new guy learn the ropes if he works hard and listens well.

If you don’t know the gear then intern until you do, or pay way too much for school like I did. Processing Tri-X by hand is fun.

NO: What qualities do you think are necessary to have as an assistant?
Justin: Qualities to have as an assistant, can seem obvious like knowing the gear, how to use it, knowing who does what on set, and showing up on time. Other key factors that could be overlooked are being able to work in a team, listening to others, and the ability to lead if necessary. A big factor that helped me get noticed as an assistant is having a positive attitude towards the job. I really enjoy lighting so every job has very fun elements and it has helped me stand out from assistants who are unenthusiastic.

NO: As a First assistant, what do you do for and with the photographer?
Justin: Part of the nature of freelance is that you are doing something different every day. The location and subjects can change but even if you are constantly hired as a 1st assistant, the job description can change dramatically.  Jobs vary based on the photographer and the actual job/subject of the shoot as well as the type of photography. You’ll develop your own rapport with each photographer you work with. My favorite shooters are those who articulate what they want without a heavy technical way because it allows me to be creative with what I use to achieve their desired effect.  Lighting is just like Photoshop, there are 3 brilliant ways to do a similar thing.

NO: How do you choose your second and third assistants?
Justin: Choosing a second and third assistant is a pleasure because you can bring on people you know work well together. On an ideal job, I would base my calls around the following order: personality match with the photographer, skill level, availability, then a new guy who works hard.

NO: What is the craziest job you’ve worked on?
Justin: There are a lot of jobs that have been crazy, from 26-hour days to not being fed for 13 hours. It seems a lot of crazy jobs happen when you are starting out and “cutting your teeth,” which is really a good thing. Everyone has his or her “job from hell” but mine was the first time I ever got $300 for a rate. It was a flat rate but I didn’t care because I was young and thought I was rich. It was also a 20-day job for a clothing company that was big in the ‘80s with a photographer from Germany. Her 1st assistant was flying with her so I was going to be the 2nd and in charge of the equipment.  Well the guy who got me the job was renting them the equipment so I walked into this spot where he had already sold the producers on his gear and all his equipment was garbage. For example, the 7Bs never held a charge. The 1st assistant from Germany was barely a notch above an intern and just stood around to hold the photographers cameras. The producers were a gang of 4 and all together they did the work of about half a producer, so EVERYTHING was a mess. On top of that, the photographer wished she was Ellen Von Unwerth but was NOT and she really just seemed to be a spoiled rich kid, and would run around with two cameras, hold the motor drive on one till it hit the buffer, then switch cameras, hit the buffer on the other and then switch. We had 3 digital techs quit on this job. Oh… and one day we were shooting at the Rosylin in Downtown LA, in the heat of August, and the drug addicts who lived in the building where throwing things out their windows from 8 stories up. Floor fans, needles and miscellaneous low income apartment clutter were smashing next to the area where we were loading in and out. After dodging objects all day, a PA got a bucket of piss dumped on him.

Looking back there were a million things wrong with the entire job but I was too green to see a lot of them and I hadn’t learned the ways of solving the issues I did see. I can still hear that photographer screaming at people in my memory…

NO: What advice can you give to people wanting to break in?
Justin: Part one, work for free as an assistant on one or two jobs because no one will turn down a free set of hands to help out. This way you can meet some assistants and if you click with them, then you have the beginnings of a network. Don’t work for free for more than two jobs. Then don’t work for a cut rate after the first 3-4 months. You’ll still be the cheap and very green guy, but you’ll be a great 3rd on Ad jobs and 2nd on editorials if you work hard.

Part two. The tricks of the trade can be learned. Hard work pays off but if you are difficult to work with you might as well not try to be a photo assistant because the job is just as much about photography as it is working with people and matching personalities. People like to work with their friends and/or people like themselves. Your people skills totally dictate who hires you and who hires you back.

Part three. Have your life set up so you will be ready for the random schedule that is freelance. Be prepared to work so many weekends that you’ll learn to enjoy your free days as “weekends” during the week. Also be prepared to miss your girlfriends birthday, you’ll probably work on most of your birthdays too, and out of all the concert tickets you buy you’ll end up giving over half the tickets away to friends because you will be on a job. If you can do all of that then throw yourself into the fire because you are ready to be a photo assistant.

Last week, I was shooting a big 5 day campaign shoot out in San Francisco, and something quite unfortunate happened. After the 3rd shoot day, we went to a studio location to scout it out. We parked our suburban outside for no more than 20 minutes with all our gear/laptop bags. We made sure to lock the doors, but we returned 20 minutes later to find the back window shattered, with my laptop bag/passport, my client’s laptop bag/purse with all credit cards, passports, and ID’s, and my producer’s purse with all credit cards/ID’s, GONE. There’s no worse feeling that getting robbed, thus the feeling of feeling violated. Thank God the really expensive bag of cameras sitting right next to my laptop bag was still there.

This is definitely a good slap in the face reminder that it can happen to anyone, and on a huge job no less. More than the camera gear still being left in the car, thank God that Jeff happened to ride in a different vehicle and took the 3 days worth of our job with him and we didn’t leave the drives in my laptop bag like we usually do. Never the less, on multiple day shoots we always leave a hard drive with a copy of each day’s work in the hotel room. We would have only lost one day’s worth of work had we kept, but when there’s thousands of production dollars riding on a day’s worth of shooting that’s still a lot to lose. It’s a reminder to always split up the production HD’s when leaving set, even back to the hotel. A reminder to always keep an HD of the job on you or in separate rooms. A reminder to not get sloppy and forget to do these things.

Here’s an overview of how we back up on set on a travel job:
1: Jeff(digital tech), is always backing up 2 copies on set, upon download, and a 3rd through out the day. Even if he’s copying cards, we never erase a card until we have 2 copies on hard drive. You never know when something might corrupt.
2: When the day is done, separate the drives and have Jeff carrying one on his person, and/or someone else with one or in the digital bag.
3: Upon returning to the hotel, we create a 3rd/4th copy on the drive at the hotel to leave in the room in case something happens during the day. ie: Getting the laptop bag stolen
4: When returning back home, we split up the copies. Jeff will take one home with him, then ship it to me and I will take the other 2 copies with me.

ChronoSync is a great program to backup/copy/sync copies of jobs. We also use the mini G-Tech 500gb portable drives on set to capture to.

Sometimes we get sloppy and lazy to do these things, but we just got a strong reminder to keep it up.

Now I’m off to deal with the inconvenience of getting a replacement passport and visas.

We've been using Photo Mechanic for a fair amount of time now, and integrating it into the DAM process in a couple ways. I wish I could say their brand and user interface was visually appealing like any mac or adobe products, but this is a case where function overrules design even though the product would be so much better it were designed well. Maybe everything I like about the program is the sacrifice of a visually appealing interface. Ok, so that said what do I like about it?

1. The Image Display Speed: The speed at which it displays RAW photos, and any photos for that matter is faster than any program I've seen out there. Bridge, Lightroom, Aperture, and Capture One all have to generate preview files, which sometimes can be painful in waiting time just to view an image.
2. The Editing Speed: I like to make edits fast, and most of the above mentioned are so slow when moving from image to image. You can fly through hundreds of RAW images making tags with a 1-5 numbered key stroke.
3. Easy File Browsing: You can click through the drive tiers on the left side of the window. Super easy to open image folders.
4. Meta Data Application: You can create an IPTC stationary and apply it easily to a batch of images.
5. Star & Label Rating toggles: You can toggle star ratings and label ratings on and off so you only see those rated images and it's super fast and easy. Makes it easy to drag and drop to Photoshop actions and/or copy and move files to different folders.

The overall speed is the biggest advantage with this program is the overall speed of everything. That's why it trumps the rest of them. Naturally its only a piece of the process.

I'm writing this as I'm on a flight from LA to Rio De Janiero, so it inspired this thought about international travel. As you travel more and more, you get accustomed to certain things you like, and the little details of traveling. Small things that help accommodate your journey in a more pleasant experience. The more and more you travel, at least in my experience, those details start to become of more importance. Here are a few of those details that I've learned to improve to have a more adaptable and enjoyable experience.

1. The first and biggest detail is Jetlag. Some if of this is modified advice from my homey Chase Jarvis. This little bugger can be big nuisance, and will always exist, but I've found some things that help minimize it. The first and foremost is to start thinking and operating on the time zone of your destination. The second thing is to try as best you can to plan the long legs of your flight to be an overnight flight. Over the counter sleeping pills work great to help get you to sleep during that time(I use one called Unisom from Walgreens). If I'm taking an overnight flight I much prefer to have a longer flight(8 hours at least) so I can actually get a full nights sleep. I usually take a sleeping pill with dinner on the plane, or maybe before to have it kick in as soon as possible. What's great is once you're out, you wake up and you're almost at your destination. The toughest, but most important part is when you get to your destination DO NOT sleep until your normal bedtime in that time zone. (say midnight or whatever) If you stay awake until then, it''s pretty easy to adjust to that time zone after the first day. If you take a nap, you are screwed, and it will take you much longer(more days) to adjust. If I manage to stay awake that first day, I'm typically fine by the next day. This mostly applies to destinations that are 5/6 hours or more than your normal time zone. Jetlag is always tough, but this stuff does help especially if you have a job you need to quickly get adjusted to the time zone for.

2. The second is airline status. My preferred airline is United(see why at this former post.) Being loyal to one airline allows you to gain perks that make your travel experience better. One thing I love about having status with United is that whenever I book an economy ticket, I get their Economy Plus seating without extra charge. This small detail of 5 more inches of legroom makes a hugest difference in being comfortable in an economy flight, especially on a long one. Other things like, being able to use miles for upgrades, and priority security lines. All these come from being loyal to one airline. When you make certain statuses with airlines, you get access to their special lounges too. You definitely get used to those little details.

3. ROLLER BAGS! This is the most genius idea in the way of travel bags. Again, you can refer to this older post for more details. My camera roller bag has saved me many of backaches and much energy. I definitely learned this the hard way as my first camera bag was a shoulder bag. Hoofing this through airports will wear you out extremely fast, where a roller bag, you are pulling much less weight.

4. Blackberry, iPhone, or any other similar device. These are a great time maximizer while you're on the road. If you think about how much time you're trying to kill in airports, then being connected with a handheld device can help you maximize time by writing those emails, and making those calls you need to make.