Posted by
Miriam Howell
on
23/01/2011
When I completed my Degree in Photography at The Norwich School of Art and Design I thought I was ready for the photography world. It wasn't until I started to work as Mike Harrington's assistant that I realised there was a lot to learn about how to run a successful photographic business. It was then up to me to take in as much as I could and learn every possible angle of the world of photography. With assisting you are often 'thrown in at the deep end', but this is the best way to learn. The most important thing to do is to be as efficient as possible and to be willing to help and learn in all areas... including modeling gloves! There is always a lot of lifting and sorting and tidying etc. Once I had worked for mike for a while I realsied where my strengths lie, for me this was studio photography and working on production for shoots.
I had the privilege of working on the production for two high end jobs; Ryvita and Aviva. The production involved organising everything from models and locations to props and scheduling everyone/everything in. I found that a lot of the time locations were found through contacts I already had as often complete strangers are not so willing for people to photograph in their home or place of work. I love planning everything down to the last detail, for example choosing which coffee cup a model should be holding. And then it is exciting to see the hard work all pay off with a smoothly runshoot.
See the link below for the results from the Aviva shoot... see if you can spot my hands in the green house!
www.mhphotographic.co.uk/portfolio/index.php