How to be a brilliant photography assistant
I get Instagram DM's and emails pretty much every week asking me if I need an assistant on set. It's wonderful to get so many messages, and I honestly wish that I could accommodate everyone more frequently, however I already have quite a good set of assistants that I work with. If I ever am looking for someone though, please do keep an eye on my Instagram Stories, as that would usually be where I post when looking!
But I wanted to chat in today's email about what makes a good assistant… because there definitely are a few pointers. So if you're looking to start assisting, or you're already assisting and want to know what photographers might be looking for, this will be for you:
Share How You Can Help: When reaching out to ask if you can assist someone, it's important that you make the email/message about how you can - literally - assist the photographer. I get so many emails/messages which say something along the lines of: “I really would love to assist you because I want to learn how to be a fashion photographer.”
Whilst assisting can be a fantastic place to learn skills for your own photographic career, that isn't really the point. An assistant is there to make the life of the photographer easier. Therefore, you should come to sets with a good amount of knowledge of what the photographer will need. That means knowing how to set up lights, how to use light meters, how to change lenses on a camera, etc. It's totally fine not to know EVERYTHING and have to ask the photographer how they might want things done (no one is ever expected to know absolutely everything) but if you want to assist, and don't know how to use a light, I'd suggest getting on Youtube and watching lots of lighting tutorials, watching behind the scenes videos, and getting to know kit as much as you can.
What do you do if you are totally, totally new? This is where you can offer to be a second or third assistant on a set, and maybe even offer to come to your first few shoots for free, or just for expenses covered. As a second or third assistant, you could take direction from the first assistant, and be an extra pair of hands. This would give you a chance to learn how kit works, observe what the other members of the crew do, and get to grips with it all.Be On Time: This is really obvious stuff, but if you can arrive on set on time (I'd actually always aim to be 15 minutes early if you can), that makes life so much easier for everyone. It means that you can be ready to go and start setting up whilst everyone is getting ready in hair and make up, and the photographer is speaking to the client about what the plan for the day is.
Be Friendly: Again, obvious, but just be a nice, friendly person to be around, and you'll get hired over and over again. Photographers want to be around kind people, but they also want their clients to like their assistants and have a pleasant experience with them, so be friendly.
Take Initiative: One of the things that I love about the assistants that I hire, is how much initiative they have. Whenever we arrive on set, they never wait for me to tell them what to do - they just get straight to work. I'm talking about basic things like: getting camera's out of bags, putting lights on stands, setting laptops up on tether stations, laying lenses out.
It's always so great when I arrive on set, have to say hello to everyone and make sure that the clients are happy, and then I look back and most of my kit is already being unpacked and ready to use.
Don't take this to mean that the photographers you work with won't ever pitch in to help. I will always work with my assistants to get sets ready, and test lights, etc, but sometimes I need to spent time walking through a location house and planning shots with my client (for example) and it's great to know that when I get back to my assistant, we're already well on our way to being ready to start shooting, because they've taken initiative and got started.
So whenever you're on set, look around and ask yourself if there is something that you can be doing. How can you make things easier?Study The Photographers' Work: I think that most assistants will know the work of the photographers that they are going to work with, but I think it's really important to take a moment and study what they do. How do they like to light their images? Is their lighting generally quite soft, or do they like a harsher look? If you can arrive on set with some decent knowledge of what the photographer you're working for will want/need, you'll be very appreciated.
So there you go, those are a few tips on how to be a great assistant for a photographer. There are lots more tips, so I might do a part two to this eventually, but this should get you off to a good start if assisting is something that you'd like to do more of.
