Working for free PAYS!!!

    Now don't get me wrong, photography is first and foremost a business for me. But doing a little bit of pro bono work can go a long way, and that holds true for all business'. 
    As well as being a photographer I do Digital Tech work, consult, and assist other photographers. Which is actually a pretty sweet deal. I get paid to see how other people in my industry work, hone my skills for my self, make new friends, learn about things going on in the industry I may not have heard on my own, and have fun on a set without worrying about how I am doing. That last one is a big one, a photography set can be one of the coolest places in the world if you aren't worried about what you are shooting next or if everyone is happy.
   Anyways, back to the main point. On Tuesday I was asked to help out on a set as a favor, no money involved. The shoot was part test and part favor on their end anyways, so no one was making money. It was a video shoot which although I did tons of on my own in high school, don't have tons of experience with professionally. And I think I had the most experience with video out of everyone behind the lenses. We were shooting on HD-DSLR's so we had to keep switching out our memory cards as well as record audio to a better device than the cameras. Which means a computer on set to manage all the media. Guess who was in charge of managing media, recording audio, and keep the set running on a technical level, yup, that's right, me. And on top of that there were many technical difficulties to start off with. My audio weapons of choice didn't run on the out dated computer, and the shooters had some trouble learning to focus consistently on a moving subject. On top of all that we started at 5am, an hour and a half drive away from my house, and ended at 10:30pm. That is a good hard days work.
    Today (Thursday) however I heard back from the studio manager asking me if I was free to do digital tech work for a two week, fourteen solid day shoot next month. They have four other techs to chose from, but I am sure they chose me because of my favor to them on that previous shoot. Proof that being nice, helping out, and doing some freebies here and there really does pay off in one way or another.


So I guess what I get out of this is that if you take care of other people, other people will remember that and take care of you. Not every time, not always in the same way or amount, but they will.