Hopeful

I’ve been lucky enough to continue to get more assisting opportunities fairly regularly which is great! I love being to experience how they shoot, how they talk to clients and subjects, what they’re working with and how they bring it all together. It’s been an awesome learning experience every time. I’ve been assisting on a few architecture shoots with Robert Pisano, photographing the interiors of people’s homes all over Seattle, Bellevue and Mercer Island. Being able to continue learning different specialities in photography really helps gain knowledge even in the business aspect of things.

Along with Robert I’ve gotten to continue assisting with Kevin Casey on various portrait-type shoots. It’s all been able to go fairly smoothly and luckily no real mishaps have happened! I’m grateful for all the working photographers out there and being able to have the opportunities to work on in this field.

Knowing that I’m working towards something worthwhile, something that brings me happiness is an amazing thing. It took me awhile to realize that I really couldn’t have a full time time. Well, a full time desk type job. Anything involving an office setting, receptionist or office assistant work was really killing my soul so to say. I have huge amounts of respect to everyone out there who are working 40 hours a week getting that paper! But I’m definitely not one of those people. And I can safely say that with confidence even with the chances that I might fail. It should be worth it. I can’t be stuck anywhere for too long, I tend to go crazy. Being able to freelance and assist kind of on a more “random” schedule is really cool.

All the more reason to keep working towards your goals!

Moving

I recently just moved into a new apartment with my boyfriend James and friends Ari and Bryce so it was a little hectic last week but I am now fully settled in and am loving my new place in Bothell! Only thing is we don’t have any internet set up yet so I’m utilizing the Starbucks nearby. =) Stay tuned for pics.

Music [at] Golden Gardens

This last Sunday was my friend Jazmyne’s 22nd birthday and she decided to have a few local artists/friends perform at Golden Gardens. We had performances from Cory [Young C's], James [Solo], Nick [Soundproof], Kit [Porky Scoop], Joelle and Chris [Frequently Faded]. Sound equipment provided by X. Overall the show was great and the party was a blast!

Support your local artists!

Photo Assisting

Within the last few weeks I was lucky enough to land a few assisting jobs with well established working photographers. The first of which was a couple weeks ago on a Friday in the end of June and it was only for about an hour and 45 minutes. But I got to learn plenty in that small amount of time. It was with Kevin Casey of Kevin P. Casey Photography and took place in Bellevue at Intellectual Ventures taking a headshot of Nathan Myhrvold! And yes I did get to meet him too. =) If you’re not from Seattle you should know that he’s the CEO of the company, a huge collector of old inventions like fire hose nozzles and typewriters and one of the main authors of a new book series called Modernist Cuisine. Overall it was brief but a great learning experience.

Here’s a photo of the book series Nathan was a part of. Courtesy of modernistcuisine.com

Being able to set up and tear down different kinds of lighting equipment is a key thing for me to know so that I can help out with virtually any kind of lighting that a fellow photographer might have. Kevin also helped me realize that I was definitely underpricing myself. A common problem for a lot of people like me starting out, trying to get their foot in the door in this very competitive industry. When it gets competitive it’s easy for a lot of people to lower their prices just so they get the job. Which I BTW was not doing, I really just didn’t know how to price myself =P.

After that I got a 3 day gig assisting with Bradley Hart of Hart Photographic for a hotel shoot for Homewood Suites of Hilton in downtown Seattle. The gig mainly consisted of assisting for shooting interiors of various hotel rooms and features, the dining room, and a food shot depicting the reception dinner they do every night. To say the least it was pretty hard work and took a lot of time and dedication to really get the shots needed and do it right. I never realized how much set up and precision and care it took to really get a great looking interior shot, attention to detail is a MUST for this field! It could take up to a couple hours to get every single object and piece in the shot to the most perfect state and in pristine condition. There was lots of time spent adjusting the tiniest of things like moving a bedside table an inch or two closer or further, making sure the curtains were evenly spread, bedskirts were even to the floor and unwrinkled, pillows all properly fluffed and sitting straight and on and on.

It was really cool seeing him work with a Cambo on his 5D Mark II. It’s a great way to utilize that 4×5 camera style but still using digital. It almost makes me nostalgic thinking about the good ol’ days when I had to lug around a large format camera in downtown Seattle for school…ALMOST. I had to carry one of those from my school, the Art Institute, all the way to my bus stop at Benaroyal hall and if you don’t know what that means, it means I walked FAR with a very very heavy camera and tripod. I swear I almost died when I got to the bus.

If you don’t know what a Cambo looks like, here’s a photo courtesy of Cambo.com

Lastly, I had another small half day gig the other day assisting for Richard Brown of Richard Brown Photography with a few corporate head shots of the big execs that needed to be taken in Redmond at VMC. VMC does video game testing for various companies including Microsoft. The gig was fairly basic. I helped carry over equipment, set up lights and was able to relax a bit while Richard took the photo’s. It was all over within an hour or so and was fairly painless.

All in all I have to say that the last few weeks were very informative and a great opportunity to really look into the photo industry and see what the proper business practices are, how to better handle clients and subjects and what it takes to get the shots needed. I am definitely going to pursue this further and start assisting a whole lot more. It really is a great job to have!

M o r e   i n f o