freelance photo assisting

Most every successful photographer agrees that time spent photo assisting is a necessary and valuable step in a photographers career. By assisting already established photographers you can learn how workflows, lighting techniques and client relations work in the real world. You will also see when things don’t work ideally and that can be just as valuable.

I began photo assisting while still in high school, working in the darkroom of the local portrait / wedding photo studio. Gradually I learned the various steps necessary to set up a portrait shoot and take event photos. Soon I was trusted with shooting the simpler jobs for the studio.

When my attention turned to commercial photography it was time to seek photographers in that genre and offer my assisting services to them. Every photographer is different in personality, style and working methodology. Some are high strung and bring lots of energy to a set (think: people photographers). Others may be very quiet, focused and methodical (food / tabletop specialists). The really great thing is that there is something to learn from each and every one. By seeing how other photographers work we can better define our own careers and begin to set further goals for what we really want from the profession.

This entry is the start of a short series on freelance photo assisting. Most of the assisting jobs out there are freelance, meaning you are in business for yourself, marketing your services to photographers. While there are full-time, staff assisting jobs out there they have become less prevalent in recent years. Most studios have downsized simply don’t want to carry the overhead of multiple employees so they use freelance help instead, staffing up for specific jobs.

I will offer my perspective on freelance assisting both as a former assistant and as a business owner that interviews potential new assistants on a regular basis. There are some pretty universal methods for approaching photographers for work and important things to keep in mind once you have the work.

next up: looking for assisting work