Need an assistant in Minneapolis, MN area?

[aaron_lee___minneapolis__m]

Hi, My name is Aaron. I shot my first wedding back in August with a friend in photography

school. I have been extremely interested in getting into the business, but know that

assisting a real pro would be the best. I've been doing a LOT of reading and looking at

other wedding images to learn from my and their mistakes.

 

I would be willing to assist and work as a second shooter with the intention of mentoring

me.

All my images would share copyright, I would not retrain rights to sell them - only for

portfolio use.

 

Sincerely,

 

Aaron

[ubejammin]

I wish you better luck than I had. It's a tough market here and I had very little success finding a mentor or someone willing to take me on as an assistant - and I offered to work for free. Now that I have some experience on my own I could really use help with processing questions and discussions about exposure/composition issues. But, once you become viewed as "the competition" your already limited resources dry up REALLY quickly.

 

My advice would be to keep shooting, keep critiquing your own work, stay positive and don't give up. As I already said, I hope you have better luck than I did!

[aaron_lee___minneapolis__m]

Andea,

 

I took a quick look at your work. Perhaps we could work together a couple times? I do

have some ideas that we could work together on that would be mutually benificial.

 

I wanted to work with my friend as we were a great tag team: we were always in

complimentary positions to make sure if one of us did not get the shot/angle, the other

one had it nailed right away. Unfortunately, he swears he will never do a wedding again!

Too much stress, he said. I totally loved it!

 

I'm going to try and check the local PPA as well.

 

Thanks!

 

Aaron

[bill_clark___minnetonka_mi]

Aaron,

 

I work in Minneapolis as a professional wedding photographer. I now have two assistants but, as the owner of a small business, I've found it extremely hard to find good hard working and dedicated people. The wedding business is not a 9 to 5 job. The hours are different than many jobs.

 

When you find some pro, arrange a meeting. Then don't cancel it at the last momemt because something else came up or say something like, "Well, I know you could use me at this wedding but I've got other plans." That's not a good way to start a relationship with someone who is working hard with all of the aspects of running a small business.

 

Join the local TCPPA. They have a wonderful meeting this Monday at the Vo-Tech in Eden Prairie. Dues are $70.00 per year and we'd love to have you join us. You will meet other pros who are working hard at becomming successful in this industry.

 

Once you get known as a competant, trustworthy and caring person doors will open for you.

 

Best to you.

[aaron_lee___minneapolis__m]

Bill,

 

Sounds like you've had quite a few people back out on you, huh?

 

That *REALLY* irritates me, too :)

 

Heheh I just got off the phone with a Comcast internet "supervisor".. the first one to actually hear what the problem is. After I gave him about as much information as I could think of to help *Comcast* do the troubleshooting, he said "You would be invaluable to our team! We would *never* have any outages!" Couldn't say there wouldn't be any outages, but I would be on them like tar on the road.

 

Cheers!

 

Aaron

[jeremy_smith]

Hey, just a heads up on something in Mpls (actually Minnetonka) next weekend. This is a craigslist ad I found from a guy who's getting married next Friday (or Sat), has for some reason waited to the last minute to find a photographer, and is offering the taker the staggeringly pathetic sum of $200 to come to the hotel where the event is taking place (it's the Sheraton West, Minnetonka) and shoot the ceremony (the reception, he seemed less concerned with--says he'll shoot most of it himself). Having basically the same amount of experience with weddings as you, I was mildly curious about it til I found out it was indoors (by emailing the guy). I took a look at the website for the hotel and can only assume that the event is to take place in the ballroom, which, in true ballroom fashion, appears to have no windows (It does have a low, white ceiling and fairly adequate tungsten light, though). I've decided that I'm definitely not doing this--I don't own a good flash or a bracket for that matter and can't find anyplace to rent equipment in Minneapolis (might be wrong about this--I just moved here from Seattle, so I'm not familiar with the city). Moreover, for $200, there's no way in hell I'm going to go out and rent equipment on top of buying film and covering all the expenses of processing. That leaves my only option to do the whole thing with the two prime lenses I have and some fast film and no flash, but I'm thinking I will pass on this. Still, not to set you up for failure (being as you've got basically 1 week to prepare), but if you've got the equipment, I bet you could shoot just the ceremony, make a few bucks profit, and build your portfolio a bit. In any case, the guy would come away with way better pictures than he's going to get otherwise--I asked him to tell me specifically what equipment he had (just to give him some advice) and he told me "Nikon 5meg and Minolta 8meg". Not exactly sure what cameras those are, but it sounds like he's going to be shooting his own reception with P&S digicams with some wonderful on-camera flash in a drab, artificially lit ballroom. Here's the ad: http://minneapolis.craigslist.org/evs/102646207.html

And also a picture of the suspected venue from the hotel website.