A Photo Assistant

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One of the best things about being a freelance photo assistant is that almost nothing is ever the same. One day you’re working on a product shoot surrounded by strobes, the next day a lifestyle/fashion shoot for a big ad agency, then maybe a day on location at the L.A. Times press production plant, then a day shooting interior and exterior architecture, and then cap off your week with a grueling day on the beach with body-builders and bikini babes. And yes, that day on the beach will be grueling, if you’re not accustomed to it!

But, I suppose if your existence thrives on rote routine, you’d be just fine with your employee position, working for the man, and you probably wouldn’t even be reading this blog post. To me, the very thought of punching a clock, going to my cubicle or assigned work station, and performing the same mundane duties, day-in and day-out, in the same drab environment, makes me want to dive into a drum of stop bath. There was a time when I played these work-a-day rituals, even while working in the photo industry while at a few different commercial labs, and I was very unhappy and unfulfilled in my ability to eek out a happy and creative existence.

So, being a photo assistant and photographer is usually never boring. But that doesn’t exactly mean it’s all fun and games. In fact, there’s been many times, at the end of the day, when I felt like I had never worked harder in my life…

Try fifteen hours, on location, in an old historic theater in downtown Los Angeles, lugging in every imaginable piece of lighting gear (kino, strobe, HMI), grip, hundreds and hundreds of feet of Bates cable for power distribution, props, and of course, a gazillion pounds of sandbags. Set up six or seven shots for 35mm digital and film, medium-format digital and film, and video. All the while remembering you are in one of the most historic buildings in the L.A. Theater District, and must be careful not to bang shit into the walls and doorways, stay on a track of heavy-duty kraft paper to minimize dirt and wear-and-tear on the carpet, and keep everything moving quick and smooth, despite your every carefully calculated move. Then pack it all up into the truck within an hour because production ran too long and the two security guards are going to bill production triple-time after the hour is up. Then, after that, deal with L.A. traffic for a relaxing two and one-half hour drive home to Palm Springs. Well, that last part is just me whining, but I’m hoping to gather a little sympathy, despite the fact that I was living in Palm Springs at the time.

Then there’s the shoots where you fly into Vegas for a couple of days to shoot young, twenty-something’s partying it up in a newly remodeled Vegas casino and hotel. Call time is 4AM because that’s the slowest time on the casino floor to get that money shot at the craps table. Then you hit the poker room and get the lighting dialed-in for three different angles. Then lunch and right back at it to start staging the big dance club shot, shooting from a boom-lift out on Freemont Street, overlooking the second-level balcony terrace. There’s people everywhere wanting to know what you’re doing and where they can see the photos later, after publication. After four hours of setting up the lighting and layout, the pretty models do their thing and everyone is having fun and then your radio battery dies and you can’t hear the photographer out in the boom-lift and hell breaks loose. After some creative mesaage-relaying, we get the shot, and it’s off to the new sushi restaurant for the last shot of the day. Everything goes off without too much trouble once we get all the lights set just right for all the model positions, but you’re constantly on guard for casino patrons who are busy looking at what’s going on rather than where they are walking, and possibly tripping on the head extension cables, even after you taped them down all nice and neat. Can you say liability? Then you discover one of the strobes isn’t firing and after replacing batteries in the pocket wizard, switching out the head, then the power pack, you finally determine the head-extension cable is bad from some lady stomping on it with her high-heels. Hey what about my dinner? The buffet closes at 10PM? What time is it now? 9:50! Aw man….

Now don’t get me wrong. I’m not at all whining and complaining about the long hours, short meal breaks, travel, heavy lifting, gawkers, and inconvenient special circumstances. Well, maybe just a little bit. But if I was crammed into some office or warehouse I’d definitely be kicking and screaming all day long and feeling miserable and making everyone else miserable. But, working on-set, at least I know I’ve been thoroughly challenged, overcome those obstacles creatively, enjoyed myself being a part of the production team, and feel appreciated by the photographer and the client. And hey… I’m in Vegas!

The bottom-line is that every shoot is different. Different photographers, different production crew, different locations, different gear… variety is definitely the spice of life. And, on a photo shoot, you just never really quite know what’s going to happen until you find it staring you in the face. To me, that’s awesome! I would rather work my ass off for a few days a week doing a variety of things I love, instead of mindlessly running on the hamster wheel for someone else. I would never get to have the same experiences that I’ve had sitting in a cubicle and taking two weeks vacation every year.

Yesterday, I started assisting on a two-day gig with a local photographer who shoots a lot of residential architecture for editorial. We had a number of interior shots, and possibly some exterior shots that were still being sort of figured out together by the designer, architect, and photographer. We knew we were cramming a lot of work into a one and one-half to two day shoot, but that’s how it goes these days. Digital photography has really created a fervent, fast-paced production schedule for all types of shoots. This has made it very necessary for the assistant to be a good multi-tasker, be proactive, and to be able to roll with the punches.

It seems, more and more these days, that the photographer’s artistic eye is counted on by others to make the shots. The designer and architect knows what they want, but many times they don’t know how to communicate it to the photographer. So the photographer shows up on set, meets with the client, and discusses shots while you, the assistant, hauls in the gear, sets up and stages lighting, grip, and camera. On a shoot where there are many shots, there will likely be a couple assistants, so one is always setting up the next shot while the other assists the photographer with the final touches before shooting. All this, and the photographer is thinking about the next shot or two, keeping the clients ideas in mind to satisfy their needs, and getting approvals if necessary. So, the photographer is always kind of wandering around, thinking out loud, giving you instructions, talking to client or designer, changing their mind, giving you new instructions, on the phone, making camera and lighting tweaks, and on and on. You, the assistant, needs to make everything happen that the photographer needs, on the fly.

You need the mental and physical wherewithal to meet these demands to be a good photo assistant… So, for the next shot start by setting a small box on a c-stand with a gobo arm at the top of the stairs, quick change out the can-lights with strobe bulbs, then set a clamp light with an extender in the wine room, run back and add cinefoil to a small box to lower the bleed on the ceiling, back to the next set-up and set power to split two heads off one pack, making sure the cables will be out of the way, then back to camera set and tape up a lamp cord out of view behind the side table leg, run outside and tweak the “sun” light on the combo, remind the landscapers nicely to be aware of the cords coming out from the garage, back inside and rake the carpet, add another clamp light to brighten a corner in the back room, adjust some more lights for ceiling bleed, sweep the floor, and then, finally shoot. Then break down this set as you continue building the next lighting set-up, and start thinking about the next shot after that. In addition to all this, in between all the mayhem (when I had a couple extra minutes), I took down about twenty strings of Christmas lights wrapped around a large tree in the front yard, from a ladder about fifteen feet up, so we can do a dusk exterior shot tonight. After eleven hours of this, even I was exhausted. You better have some stamina and mental aptitude to get through a day like this!

Don’t worry, you will get the experience and wherewithal. If you are scratching your head and saying, “No way!,” believe me, you will. But it takes some common sense, perseverance, and knowledge about the gear you’re working with. If you ever find yourself in-over-your-head on a shoot like this before you feel confident about it, make sure you befriend the 1st assistant or the photographer and let them know that you need a little help getting up to speed. If you don’t, you probably won’t work with that crew or photographer again. If you’re honest and up-front, most will feel empowered by taking you under their wing and you will have made a good friend and colleague.

The LOOK 3 Festival of the Photograph is going down now in Charlottesville, VA. Events, exhibits, workshops galore. Check it out here.

With all the hooplah over copyright infringement and the looming revisions to copyright and orphan works legislation, it seems like us photographers and other producers of digital media are being backed into a very deep corner, with less and less hope for protecting our intellectual property.

But how many of you are at least utilizing metadata? Creating metadata within photoshop and tagging your image and other intellectual property will help to protect your interest in your image. To quote www.photometadata.org, “Digital photo files can include descriptive, technical and administrative classes of metadata of several types. These can list an image’s creator, copyright holder, source and description. They can explain rights released and available to an image. They can list how and when an image was created, its size, color characteristics and more.” While using metadata with your image is not a guarantee in completely protecting your copyright, it is definitely better to have the metadata in place, than not at all. In addition to helping you to protect your copyright, metadata can aid you in making money licensing your photography, smooth out workflow, track image use, and to locate your files in databases.

Take a few moments to click on over to www.photometadata.org to learn everything you wanted to know about metadata, and more. You’ll find resources on how to embed metadata into your images, make use of proper copyright practices, and answers about licensing. There is a lot of good information and other resources to help you get up to speed on making metadata work to your advantage. There are also some upcoming free getMETAsmart events scheduled in select US cities, where you will learn first-hand all the proven methods and technigues for putting metadata to work for you.

Once you register at the site, you can submit a survey about your metadata usage to help shape metadata education, and also be notified when new material is added to the site, like the Meta Tutorials. I really like this site. It’s clean, well organized, and easy to navigate. It takes the intimidation and boredom out of the equation, which we’ve all experienced whenever we delve into the deep pit of metadata and copyright practices.

This past Wednesday night, Vincent LaForet paid us a visit here in Minneapolis for the local ASMP chapter’s May meeting. The event was held at Minneapolis College of Art & Design (MCAD). The lecture was very well attended, as you might imagine… everyone from the weekend photo enthusiast, to the photo student, to the commercial advertising shooter.

If you don’t know of Vince and his work, I would encourage you to come out from under your rock. Just in case you missed Reverie, Vince’s ground-breaking video shot from a prototype Canon 5D-M2, you can see it here. It was great to hear Vince talk about the whole experience… how begged Canon to lend him one of the seven prototypes due to ship out the same day he was visiting their office… how he had a speaking engagement that night that he couldn’t get out of, so had to ask his wife to start pre-production work without him to line up models, locations, etc… how he and his friend threw together a storyboard in about an hour, at midnight, after his speaking engagement… how he began filming the next evening with little knowledge of the 5D-M2’s video operation… how he didn’t know he could take it out of auto-focus mode… and on and on. Essentially, Vincent and his small crew pre-produced and produced the Reverie film short over a weekend, shooting only at night! Truly amazing when you consider the lighting issues he had to deal with, commandeering a helicopter for one of the scenes, tethering automobile rigging for many different city street motion shots, and many other elements all thrown together at the last second because the 5D-M2 literally fell into his lap late one Friday afternoon! Reverie has actually opened new doors for Vincent, and he is relocating to Los Angeles to be closer to new clients and opportunities.

Despite the success and acclaim of his recent video work, there’s much more to Vincent LaForet than just Reverie. Vince has been primarily an editorial and commercial photographer in New York for over 15 years. His recent primary focus has been on aerial photography, with many published images in national and international magazines and newspapers. His Drying of the West series ran in National Geographic and created a desperate new awareness of the state of water in the southwest United States. Vince was also a staff photographer at the New York Times, and sports photographer. You may remember his coverage of the Beijing Olympics in 2008.

I could literally go on and on here about Vince just from his one night he spent with us in Minneapolis, which was truly inspiring. But, the fact of the matter, is that you can learn everything you could ever need to know at his website and blog. So go check him out!

http://www.vincentlaforet.com/
http://blog.vincentlaforet.com/

NYTimes: LENS

Lens is the photojournalism blog of The New York Times, presenting the
finest and most interesting visual and multimedia reporting —
photographs, videos and slide shows. A showcase for Times
photographers, it also seeks to highlight the best work of other
newspapers, magazines and news and picture agencies; in print, in
books, in galleries, in museums and on the Web. And it will draw on The
Times’s own pictorial archive, numbering in the millions of images and
going back to the early 20th century