Spent three years working for a professional photographer as a photographer's assistant. That entailed... setting up the studio, lighting setup, camera setup, visiting client relations, refreshments for the day, food, drinks, coffee, logistics for models and clients etc. Then my real job was handling the post production of the day's work. (That's a post on its own) Fairly often, we would have to do field work, which entailed packing a SUV with all the equipment, lighting, batteries, cameras, boxes of lenses and tripods, heavy, heavy, bulky, equipment. It used to just fit into the SUV, but you had to pack it a specific way. You had to balance the weight.
What interested me was the shoots out at people's homes, so we would shoot beautiful homes for magazines and, various glossies. The amount of work involved to get a couple of shots for each room or the outside view - just from a lighting perspective was phenomenal. Learnt so much, it is where I learned how to, first of all choose an angle of shooting, of shooting a room, and how to go about doing that. Framing the shot and and always having something that would catch your eye in the shot. Something a little off, something a little out of place or a little skew, something that would add to the visual hierarchy. Working with stylists and assisting a professional photographer, it was, thoroughly enjoyable.
I had to give it all up at a stage when my father became very ill, and I had to go and look after him in a little town in the middle of nowhere. It was a very beautiful, tourist town. Folks headed out there from the big cities for the weekend to stop for a couple of days, and there were loads of hotels and B&B's, guest house's etc.
I have a little entry level camera with a couple of very simple, small lights and my trusty Apple laptop. I went to the fanciest hotels and B&B's and simply asked if I could just shoot their rooms and their establishments for free, just so that I could stay fresh and get some experience doing it for myself. Ultimately, in a small town like that, I managed to start getting people to to pay for the photography. I then taught myself how to put together a drop and drag website and just kept things simple. So with some beautiful room images and surrounding scenery I started a nice little career for myself. Time was my own. I was able to spend as much time as I wanted with my dad. And I had this wonderful job. Folks were very kind and warm and they enjoyed the work. It did the job for them. I enjoyed cleaning the images, straightening a little bit and just making the image look warm and inviting, and most importantly, that it portrayed exactly what the room etc looked like in real life. I remember each and every place, each and every photograph, very fondly. The people, their idiosyncrasies and the efforts they used to put into their business. There was joy involved.
The images below are mine from various B&B's. Very little in the way of artificial light, just natural light.
