An Assistant’s Tale

Thursday, June 26th, 2008 - Nicholas Calcott

Given that I currently gain a large portion of my income from assisting, I get a kick when the old timers start going with the tales. Reciprocity Failure has one such tale that starts (in my imagination) “When I was your age, Sonny, we had to walk 50 miles through the snow, uphill both ways…”

All kidding aside, though, I can’t count the number of times I’ve wanted to pull a stunt like this:

So I smiled at his self satisfied mug as I repositioned the office typewriter from his desk onto my shoulder (that’s right kids, computers were just a gleam in your mother’s eyes), walked out the studio, and slept soundly every Sunday morning since.

Read the full story here.

Primadonnas

Friday, February 8th, 2008 - Nicholas Calcott

Me being lazy
I fell asleep like 2 seconds after this picture was taken.

I’ve got the posting fever today! Ah, well, it’ll iron itself out over the next few days. Anyways, enjoy it while it lasts (while work is going slowly).

Anyways, this post is actually apropos an interview to be found on Thomas Broening’s blog with art buyer Jennifer Small:

Right when I started working in this business I was on a job. The photographer had an assistant , and granted he hadn’t taken a day off in a long time and we were shooting in Wyoming. And there is not really a place in Wyoming to get a catered lobster lunch. The producer went out and got sandwiches but it was all very nice. And the assistant comes up to the table and looks at the food and says,‚ÄùI can‚Äôt work like this!!‚Äùand stomps off.

Which absolutely makes me laugh my ass off. Having been (and still am, I suppose) an assistant, it’s true: Our favorite thing to do on shoots is to sit around and bitch about photographers being a pain to work with (I’ll save the stories for a later date when I’m not stoned on cough medicine and can remember something more than my own middle name).

Still, given how many stories I’ve heard, it’s good to read of the assistant being the dick on this one.