rico moran

Assisting

Recently, I’ve been scouring local and national magazines, awards annuals, CAPIC directories, and photography blogs looking for photographers to assist for in the future. Most of the photographers I’ve found are based in Toronto, a few in Montreal, then there’s a pretty even spread of photographers from Calgary and Vancouver, and a couple in Edmonton. Now, my search has been focused on commercial and editorial photographers so I’m sure I could find a many more wedding and industrial shooters who are closer to home. I don’t want to be assisting for very long so I’d prefer to be more targeted in who I work for. Having said that, assisting for anyone would (likely) be more enjoyable than retail sales.

It seems like photographers who hire assistants look first to people they’ve worked with before, then to assistants recommended by other photographers they know, and then to those people on their contact list with no references or experience. Right now, I’m sitting pretty close to the bottom of most shooters’ lists to call for assisting. I need to not be at the bottom of that list. Jake Stangel recently wrote about how to get meetings with magazines, which is a great model of how to get in contact with most people in the photo industry. In addition to sniping key people with emails and phone calls, I think an over-the-top promo project could be in order. I like the idea of something portraying me as a “super assistant” or as one who works so hard and I think it would appeal to those people I’m trying to reach. Obviously this would have to be accompanied by actually working hard, but the fact that I’m putting together a promo for them should be some indication of my work ethic.