Is A Photo Assistant The Same As A Digital Tech?

photo courtesy © Bruce Christianson

Last night I dropped by MCAD again to attend another ASMP-MSP meeting, this time in conjunction with MNDigiTechs, to address some of the issues that photographers and others in the photo community are having when it comes to distinguishing the role of a digital tech, and just how they should to be used in a specific workflow. Much of the discussion focused on what a digitech does, and why they do what they do.

The comparison of digitech vs. traditional photo assistant came up more than once, and it’s the opinion of this photo assistant that my role as a photo assistant is much different than that of a digitech. A few members on the panel made the definition of what goes on in front of the lens is the responsibility of the photo assistant, and what happens behind the lens, or after capture and in the computer, is the responsibility of the digitech. I 100% agree with this most basic job description.

But, of course, there will always be the exception when I’m asked to download of a CF card from camera to computer. Even so, it is rare for me to do much raw editing, color correcting, or retouching during production. And, if so, it’s done on the fly, only in a mock-up sense, the photographer knowing that he will be doing his own digital imaging in post. While some digitechs are expected to perform such tasks while on set during production, many feel this practice is futile and distracts from primary file management, camera ops, and hardware/software optimization. On the flip-side of the same topic, if a digitech is expected to act in the capacity of a photo assistant setting lights, wrangling cords, helping the producer, getting lunch, and attending to the set, then the role of the digitech is again compromised and the workflow will suffer. What the digitech is primarily doing is taking on the job that the film lab used to fulfill, but now it’s done real-time.

The panel consisted of four local digital techs… Jeremy Wilker of Tweak Digital, Rick Haring, Ben Saltzman, and Jim Niehart. Also on the panel were two guest digitechs… Kat Andrews, a tech from Smashbox Digital in Los Angeles, and Todd Schweikert, the V.P. of Industrial Color in New York City. The panel was humorously moderated by Clark Patrick, who is a co-founder of MNDigiTechs.

The presentation was well attended and I feel that there was a good quorum which will help address some of the pressing concerns going forward. Hopefully, a precedent has begun to take shape on this debate, and now budgets and production expenses are able to be adequately quantified, so that photographers won’t have to be so bogged down with the learning curve of our digital age, and can be photographers once again.