What's the most important prerequisite to creativity? Trust. How do you learn to trust yourself enough to create? Practice your art.
What do you need in order to practice? Humility.
How do you get humble? Be honest.
What do you need to do to get honest? Have courage.
What gives you courage? Hope.
What fosters hope? Loving.
Everyone carries his own expectations to a shoot. After my time assisting, I realized that my expectations did not always match up to those of the photographer. This can create friction, so it's important to recognize what sort of assistant the photographer is after. For the record, I had no problem doing my damnedest to fulfill any of these roles in any combination. Except flunky. I can't do flunky, apparently.
Laborer Almost always, whatever else the photographer wants, he wants a laborer to some degree, whether it's hustling equipment from the van to the location, setting up grip, or moving "that flag, no not that one, just a little...no the other way". But sometimes, that's all he wants - he doesn't want advice, or conversation, or to have to answer questions about his career.
Flunky Sometimes it happens that the photographer doesn't need a photo assistant at all, and he just wants someone to make him look good, whether that's by clowning around, nodding excitedly at everything he says, or being the butt of his jokes all day.
Consultant This is what, ironically, it seems most new photo assistants want most to be, for good reason; but youth is wasted on the young. When the photographer wants this, and you're ready for it, it can be superb experience, and a superb experience - she tells you what she's after, you make a suggestion or two, she picks one and perhaps offers some modifications, and you execute it together.
Producer Provided there isn't already a producer, and there are enough assistants, any good assistant should be able to coordinate all the minutiae of a shoot, whether that's coordinating models, picking and arranging for gear, managing other crew members, or even keeping the photographer on schedule. This is probably the most dangerous thing to misjudge though, because if someone else thought he was doing it, and you come in all "oh no I got this", it'll result in hurt feelings at best.
Protege While this can look an awful lot like Flunky, it's fundamentally different. The photographer needs to pass along some of her experience, and while this is often true incrementally, sometimes it happens that it becomes the primary thing, and you end up behind the camera much more than usual, or getting an eyeful of the bidding process. Be grateful for times like this.
Windowdressing I doubt anyone will ever want this from me, but I have seen it: an assistant who is primarily someone nice to be around. Attractive, personable, charming, and almost no assisting skills.
Therapist Sometimes the photographer needs a lot of moral support, and might look to you to provide it. Depending on the personality of the photographer, this can be a really gratifying two-way street of exploration and discovery, or it can be a hellish crawl down a dead end lane. It's not like you really have a choice though - if they're going to lean on you, you can't just let them fall over.
PA Oh you thought you were going to be handling lights, maybe triggering the camera for a couple test shots? Ok, but can you go to Starbucks again, first? And then we need you to go to Brickley and get another EZ UP, this one's blue.
Late last year, Jeffrey Han of 7Pipe contacted me. He said that he'd noticed me because of my smoke pictures, and that he wanted to develop a new, much more polished brand look for his smoking pipe. His product was one of the first, if not the first, of its type, but lately the niche had become saturated and he was looking for ways to stand out from the crowd. Jeff wanted to create some beauty shots of the product, with smoke, as well as some clean, catalog-type shots, and several lifestyle shots, all to use throughout his marketing efforts. He had high aims, which is great, and some budget restrictions, which made for a challenging situation. I developed a half dozen different scenarios that I thought would meet his needs, with a decent range of costs (here's the proposal, if you're interested). Jeff decided on a number of shots from me, and decided to work with an additional photographer for some other shots.
The pipe comes with a glass insert, but you can get a bamboo one, if you prefer.
The integral lighter is genius, if you ask me.
The back cover adheres magnetically; remove it to change the insert or access that little compartment.
The hero shot. We actually drilled out the back plate so I could put a little light through the glass bowl.
This is a surgical-grade glass insert. Jeff is not messing around.
The beauty shot. I think we did about 75 frames of smoke. I drifted the smoke through the hole we drilled in the back plate so I could be sure we captured realistic behavior.
For a studio guy, I've been amazingly lucky with the weather lately. The coast was socked in from SF to Monterey, but this little cove was clear. The budget being what it was, we were relying on luck...
Another budgetary relief factor, we showed up and asked locals to model. Directing these skaters was like herding cats. Nice guys though.
And finally, here is the new website for 7Pipe.
