A good assistant is someone who isn’t afraid to ask questions. Someone who has an almost scientific attention to detail. Someone who has initiative, who can help the photographer out of a tricky spot. Someone with diplomacy. Someone who’s enthusiastic. Someone who leaves their own photographic aspirations at the studio door. Someone with useful contacts. Someone with a PhD in Photoshop. Someone who can work long, long hours for little pay and take it in their stride. Oh, and they’re not bad at making a cup of tea either…

At its most simple the role of the assistant is to help the shoot run smoothly. It makes no difference if you’ve got years of assisting experience or you’re just starting – the smooth running and successful conclusion of a shoot should always be the assistant’s ultimate aim. When you first start out, it’s unlikely that you’ll have any huge responsibilities, so ensuring the smooth running pretty much involves doing what you’re told and using your initiative here and there if it looks like things might have potential to start going pear-shaped. At first your tasks will involve basic manual tasks like helping the photographer carry bags and set up lights. If you’re assisting a photographer shooting film, ones of your main roles will be loading film and handing freshly loaded backs to the photographer as the shoot progresses. You’ll need to log the shot film, numbering the rolls, and quite possibly keeping track of frames on a test roll if you’re shooting transparency (which will help tell how the other rolls need to be processed rather than by clip testing). Obviously you’ll need to know how to load different camera backs, and as this is such a crucial element of the shoot it’s not something you want to screw up. So, as with all aspects of assisting, if you don’t know something put your hand up right away and ask before it’s too late. The same goes for when you do make a mistake (it’ll happen…). As tempting as it may be to try to cover it up, you’re better off coming clean and taking the stick for it, but at least avoiding any further mistakes that might come about as a result. (On one of my very first jobs as an assistant I loaded the wrong speed film stock. It was transparency, so there was very little latitude for error, and on reloading the film back and noticing it was 400 not 100 I realised with not exactly what I would call joy that the photographer had just overexposed every frame by two stops. It was a corporate job and we ended up having to get the chief exec back in and re-shoot him. So it wasn’t a great situation, but it could have been a lot worse if the first the photographer had known about it was when he picked up the film from the lab and found it unusable (it would have been the last time I worked with him for a start). Yes, I was ticked off a bit but I ended up having a long and successful working relationship with the photographer.)

If you’re assisting on a digital shoot it’s likely you’ll be helping to download compact flash cards, organise images as they’re shot, or any number of other things. It’s not uncommon for photographers to call on your Photoshop skills for basic retouching tasks, though it’s not necessarily expected. As a side note, it’s worth brushing up on those computing and retouching skills as much as possible. There are still a lot of old-school photographers out there who’ve been putting off the inevitable for as long as they can and sooner or later are going to have to switch to digital. When they do, they’re going to need a good digital assistant to show them the ropes.

Whether the shoot’s digital or film, you’ll do well when you’re starting out to fine-tune your common sense. If you’re shooting in an unfamiliar location, make sure you know where the plug sockets are. If you’re going to need to shift furniture around, make sure you memorise where everything was so you can put it back together again. If you’re shooting with a new photographer, you should make a mental note of what came out of which bag so it goes back just the way it was for the next shoot (it could be a disaster if on their next shoot the photographer runs out of the door with a bag they thought had their tripod in only to discover instead it’s got a lighting stand and two softboxes when they’re up the other end of the M6 and it’s too late).

This is all quite basic stuff. The next level of assisting starts to enter the phase where you’re able to tune in to the photographer’s needs. Rather than just carrying out tasks as and when you’re told to, you’ll be predicting what needs to be done next. A really good assistant will have worked with enough people to be able to adapt to individual photographers’ working methods quickly enough to pre-empt what needs to be done before they’re asked. They’ll be counting the frames as they’re shot and be hovering at the photographer’s shoulder with the next film back before the winding handle stops cranking, or maybe they’ll have another memory card at the ready. They’ll get something for the more sensitive photographer to kneel on before the photographer realises their knees are burning. After a while, a good assistant will have developed a good working knowledge of a number of different lighting systems and will be able to advise photographers on what, for example, they might need to hire for a shoot. A specialist assistant, for example a car photography assistant, will have an in-depth knowledge of the techniques and styles that the photographer needs to complete the shoot, and as a result will find themselves in great demand from other photographers who might find themselves having to shoot in a style unfamiliar to them. On the same tack, a good assistant can be worth their weight in gold for the local knowledge they possess – they’ll have great contacts in the industry with set-builders, lighting hire shops, they’ll know locations inside out, including how different places are affected by the sun at different times of day. This knowledge can be invaluable to photographers who are shooting away from home on location and some local know-how.

The final stage of assisting is where you’re able to do all these things – you know how different photographers work, you know everything there is to know about lighting, you’re great at dealing with clients in a diplomatic way, and you can pre-empt photographers’ needs – but you also have a zen-like ability to tune into the shoot. This might sound a little ridiculous, but there is a stage at which you will feel like it’s your shoot, not the photographer’s – they’re just the one taking the pictures. You’re watching everything, running the whole operation, from making sure the second and third assistants are doing their job properly checking the flashes are syncing, to making a mental note to check the production team has ordered the photographer’s favourite brand of balsamic vinegar for lunch, to remembering to phone the lab to get the clip tests biked round. You’ll go to bed at some ridiculously late hour and it’ll take you half an hour to get to sleep because your head is still buzzing from juggling all that information and those tasks, not because you had to but because you took a genuine pride in your work and in making sure that that shoot ran as smoothly and as successfully as possible. That’s when you know you’re a really good assistant.

Obviously when you start out you’re not going to know this stuff, and that’s fine – as long as you realise you don’t know it yet. Photographers may expect a lot, but they have no reason to expect anything more than enthusiasm and a willingness to learn if you make it perfectly clear that you’re just starting out when they employ you. The worst possible assistant is one who thinks they know everything when in fact they know nothing. Rule number one when you start out as an assistant is to know your place. This might sound patronising, but it’s true. To be fair, it’s maybe an acceptable mistake to assume that because you’ve just spent three years or so studying photography and know the Scheimpflug Rule inside out (ok maybe your elderly tutor did) you’ll make a great assistant. Wrong – being a good photographer and a good assistant are two completely and utterly different things. A really good assistant needs to know all sorts of other things that you won’t find on any photography course – how many colleges teach you how to check in the bags at the airport without incurring extra baggage costs even though you’re three times over the limit? How many top graduates know the officer in charge of granting permission to shoot at Canary Wharf well enough to knock the price in half? How many would even start to know how to defuse the situation when the client and the photographer have a huge bust-up half way through a two-week shoot? And then there’s the mundane stuff like knowing which ancient lighting systems are not a good idea to sync to digital cameras. Plus the stuff you don’t even know what not to do (eg put a Profoto pack on damp grass – yes, they actually catch fire…). And obviously there’s all the jargon that gets thrown around a shoot – being told to set up a pair of redheads with some blondes might sound kind of kinky, but an active imagination isn’t much use if you don’t know the mundane truth. Then there’s the obvious stuff that you shouldn’t do when you start, but that happens, a lot, according to some photographers… Chatting up the client is not a good idea, nor is offering your opinion on the shot you’re working on when you’ve not been asked. Wearing your still damp shirt that’s been in the washing machine for two days because it’s all you’ve got that’s clean isn’t a great move either, especially when you’re going on a long car journey with the photographer (yes, I did do that, but once only). It might seem daunting when you’re starting out, but if you possess the golden virtues of honesty, enthusiasm and desire to work to the best of your abilities, you’ll be fine. Knowledge of the industry comes with time. Maybe you won’t have all the local lighting hire shops’ numbers in your mobile straight away (although you will with time), but as long as you don’t make any false claims when you start, no-one will expect you to.

©Duncan Soar 2007