I’ll be the first to admit it – sometimes the world of assisting (be it photography or videography) isn’t exactly the most exciting job in the world – holding up a white board and having camera flashes bounce back into your eyes all day isn’t exactly the ideal thought of a fun job. But that said, the pros far outnumber the cons – the number of things you can learn from an established pro, regardless of the field of work, is quite awesome, and as an individual trying to make it as a photographer – you’ll learn more working with a pro over the course of a few months than you will in a year of school, never mind trying to learn it all on your own. Plus, it’s just a hell of a lot of fun and beats the obvious alternatives of sitting behind a desk or digging ditches for all those zombies Hollywood seems to go through. So I’m not complaining…but sometimes you just have to take the dull gigs and hold up a white board all day.
Sometimes it turns into something, much, much more…
This all started when Curtis was recently hired by a video company out of Toronto called Triple Threat Entertainment – who have been working with Nike for nearly a decade. So Curtis shot a bunch of their clothing store outlets at WEM for the new campaign that Nike was putting on – with a large focus on the new Team Canada jersey design (which is pretty badass I’d have to say). So that was that. Easy gig.
Following that, the videographer with TTE – Matt Mitchell – was going to be doing some videography work at the Juniors games here in Edmonton, at Rexal – and was in dire need of an assistant. So rather than making Matt frantically search around for someone with half a brain to help him out, Curtis simply suggested me. And that again, was that. The plan was that I would simply end up doing the basic of basics when it comes to assisting – literally just helping Matt around Rexal for a couple of hours.
Ahh, how quickly things can change. Day 1 turned into a few hours of scouting Rexal for video locations, checking out all the outlets inside Rexal with the new swag, and generally just being prepared for Saturday – the day of Canada vs. USA. While Matt and I were being toured around the site…things started building up, changing, being added on, and basically morphing into: Now I have to be a dedicated photographer to cover the entire day, not just an assistant to Matt. Thankfully Matt was half prepared for this and had just bought a new 5D Mark II with a nice 24-105 f/4.0 IS lens – so that combined with my own gear made it an easy transition.
Sidenote: I met Matt on the Friday at his hotel – when he very quickly realized he had left the bag with his brand new camera, which had just been insured that day, at the airport. Thankfully the attendant at Hertz saw it first and had it there waiting…so our day actually started with me driving us back to the airport to rescue his nearly-lost camera. I had to tell that bit though…sorry Matt.
The really comical part ended up coming up on Saturday when we got into Rexal nice and early to shoot the clothing outlets before the crowds rushed in – Matt ended up almost being my assistant; placing the clothing in nice spots, moving things out of the way, getting the stores ready for photos. We joked about it and carried on…
The biggest focus of this entire project was to really cover the “Pressure is Power” slogan that Nike was using to promote the Canadian team this year – it was everywhere. At one point during the day, we had to make a mad dash from Rexal to the West End to cover the printing of one of the board covers inside the rink – then get our way back to Rexal to continue shooting…and get video of them putting the printed piece onto the boards. Did you know those things are just giant stickers? Neither did I.
I could literally sit here all night and write about this one single day – but to make a long story short: I was incredibly fun and I’ll be lucky if I ever manage to top this anytime soon. Working with Matt was a real pleasure – very professional, competent and just an all around great guy – but both of us getting free tickets for the Canada vs USA game for all our hard work over the day – that pretty much topped it off.
So the moral the story is – sometimes you just never know what can happen on a shoot, and sometimes the most mundane assignment turns into the coolest shoot you’ve ever done. I think one of the reasons I’m personally so attracted to this life/work style is the real spontaneous aspect to it – the possibility that the unexpected can and may very well happen, and that you have to be on your game and be prepared for it. I joke about it being dull or mundane, but it’s really not at all. (CURTIS NOTE: Sure its cool to have a shoot fall in your lap, but what impressed me was Kevs decision to take the assisting job. You see this all took place New Years Eve. The original assisting gig didnt entail extra pay nor did it have any promise of shooting. But because Kev took the job regardless. He effectively created an opportunity for himself and it worked out. Thats what impressed me. – Creating an opportunity regardless of sacrificing personal time for New Years.)
During the game, I tried to snap some photos off, but it’s quite hard from seat level. I did try to ninja some shots out of the small photo holes cut into the glass that the journalists use – but I got booted off by the Sun photographer after I’d snapped one photo. And it wasn’t even in focus. Bummer. In hindsight – what I should have done was gone and asked the shooter that was opposite of the Nike board if I could take a few quick snaps of it during game play…I bet Nike really would have loved that. Lesson learned.
