Day 2 Jarvie Bootcamp: Learning to Assist

This post has been created and written by attendees of the 10 day JarvieDigital Bootcamp 2011 – (Interns for summer 2011)
Each post that we will release in the coming days will be about what they learned on that day.

(Photos by Laurel Scott)

INTERN 1

Bootcamp Day 2 – “Creative Solutions”

Today we worked on workflow in the morning:

• Reject blurry photos – “X” in lightroom
• Pick photos to give to the client “P” in lightroom
• Start the rating process – 1 star, 2 star, etc.

In the afternoon we worked on assisting – which involved setting up and breaking down equipment, moving things around, understanding directions, and learning what the different pieces of equipment do.  We used off-camera flash, radio sync, light sync, manual flash settings, ttl, diffusers, reflectors, LED lights, “the sun,” etc.

Assisting was all about speed and accuracy – both are very important… but if you can “get it wrong fast” that’s ok because you can also fix it fast, and less time is ultimately wasted than if you had spent a long time getting it right the first time.  So following directions, and being able to predict what is wanted, rather than simply stand around waiting for directions, are very important aspects to being a great assistant.
Knowing how to assist is a very important skill, because then in the future, if I were to ever have an assistant helping me, I would know better what kinds of instructions to give to get the result I wanted… fast.

Knowing how to assist is a very important skill, because then in the future, if I were to ever have an assistant helping me, I would know better what kinds of instructions to give to get the result I wanted… fast.

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(Photos by Britney Brent)

INTERN 2

• Assisting is Prestiging! (Prestigious:)
• Assisting someone in some eyes may not seem to be a very prestigious job. However, it very much is! A master of photography, such as Scott Jarvie, doesn’t just let anyone assist him BECAUSE of how important an assistant is to a photoshoot.
• As an assistant it’s so important to KNOW THE EQUIPMENT!!!
• As an assistant it’s so important to make QUICK ADJUSTMENTS!!!!
• As an assistant it’s so important to LISTEN CLOSELY to instructions!!!!
• As an assistant it’s so important to UNDERSTAND THE WORK FLOW of the photographer!!!!
• As an assistant it’s so important to know GEOMETRY (if you don’t lol he’ll give you a lesson!)
• As an assistant it’s so important to LOVE WHAT YOU’RE DOING!!!
• As an assistant it’s so important to KNOW THE PHOTOGRAPHER’S style!!!

Being an assistant for a mentor you love really is a great honor! Latch on and learn every thing you can. Love every second that you have to help him be great. Assisting is a vital role is is a prestigious one… don’t take advantage of the constant learning opportunities that you will have.

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(Photos by Angela Terry)

INTERN 3

“Beep Beep Beep, Beep Beep Beep”

Being efficient is of great importance. There many ways to up your efficiency rate in photography. Using a timer to test how fast your efficiency is just one great tool to help up your efficiency rate.

I have learned that the timer is my friend and is a great tool to help train interns, for good reason. To be good and fast one must learn and practice over and over, and how do you know if you are improving? By timing yourself. It shows improvement and it helps teach yourself with repetition and speed. When working with the light boxes, stands, and flashes; first I learned how to set the items up, but then I was pushed to set them up accurately in a short amount of time. Doing it over and over, trying to beat my previous time before truly helped in my efficiency, but also in my knowledge of the equipment as well as the confidence in using the equipment.

I think the timer has become my new best friend. I now must find a cute timer at Target for my office.

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Day 2 – Basic Lightroom (picking of photos) workflow

INTERN 4

As we work on the photos we have taken, we focus on a software program Adobe Lightroom. This software was created to cater specifically to photographers and their workflow process. It is designed with a basic workflow “built in” but allows for individuals to develop their own specific direction and tools to utilized based on that persons style and needs.

Scott has refined his personal workflow around his editing style and to utilize efficiency as much as possible. As the workflow goes, we progress in layers or steps that narrow down what photos will be worked on and edited. For example: We all get blurry photos for many various reasons. The narrowing down process quickly gets rid of blurry photos and allows the editor to judge to keep or Reject (X Key in Lightroom) ones that might be a little bit softer just in case that particular photo is a unique moment, composition, subject, etc.

The next step in the workflow is to Pick (P Key in Lightroom) the good photos from the ones that may not be so good. Again, by quickly going through and narrowing down to get rid of photos that the editor would simply not want to keep for reasons that should stand out as obviously not a good photo.

We then move on to the first step in the rating process (1,2,3,4,5 Keys in Lightroom (star rating)). At this stage, we either don’t rate (also a 0 star) or add a 1 star to the photo if we want to have that photo continue on as a good photo. This will be continued on very similar to a sports team during their playing season. Al of the teams start out, then progress layer by layer or level by level until they reach the top (1 stars are then narrowed to the better 2s, then 3s, etc. until the very best are 5 stars). Keeping in mind that even the 1 star rated photos will be edited because they were picked as good photos but, the ones that made it to 5 stars will get much more attention towards their editing.

On this day, we also learned how to assist the main photographer. I will discuss this on Day 3 however.

(Photos by Scott Jarvie)

(Photo by Laurel Scott)