Alex Cornes

No shoot news here. Just a blindingly obvious and top assistants tip.

On Saturday evening I went to watch UFC 120 when the UFC (Ultimate Fighting Championship) made it’s annual trip to the UK. A great night of fights from what has been coined as the fastest growing sports organisation in the world. I’m a Muay Thai Kickboxer, Karate Blackbelt and all round MMA enthusiast myself and love sport. So here’s my relevant top tip.

Assistants Tip: Don’t sacrifice having a life for your work. Always be sure to balance the two. Keep your hobbies, keep up to date with news, interesting articles, geek out on the new technology coming up in the photography and creative industry. Have cool websites to show, my personal favourite is: http://clientsfromhell.net/. Generally be interesting and be INTERESTED in the people you are working with and for. A good assistant is not just someone who can behave appropriately on shoots and pack the gear up and down quickly. But someone who is going to be half decent company too.

I’ve been wanting to work with top portrait photographer Neale Haynes again for a while now after having a great shoot with him last year and on Friday morning I got the call. A wake up call that is! But also a call for an afternoon shoot that same day. Shooting a Pilates story for easyliving magazine we had Profoto 7b packs, several heads, strip box, beauty dish and various other attachments too. The pilates machines looked more like torture racks to me but I’mtold it’sone of the next big things. Yeah. We’ll see about that one.

On Saturday, the following day, Neale and me were shooting one of his regular jobs for Live magazine. Top chef James Martin and a really cool car, a classic in this case. We arrived at our location in good time and the weather was beautiful. Again we had 7b packs, several heads and attachments which were all set up in good time before James arrived with said car. It wasn’t long into James arriving that from nowhere the heavens opened, quite gloriously too. We waited for the rain to pass and then as we realised it wasn’t going to and time was pressing carried on and finished the shoot. Typically as I finished packing the kit away the rain stopped and beautiful sunshine broke through the clouds. You win some you lose some, shots still looked great though which is all that matters.

Assistants Tip: In Winter carry an umbrella (or two) and several carrier bags to wrap over power packs, heads and anything else electrical that shouldnt get wetwhen shooting outside.

Having driven and travelled over 1000 miles across England for work this week, I headed to Junction 11 Studios in Banbury on Saturday for a shoot with the sublime photographer Alex Howe. Technically adept and creative to no end, every shoot with Alex is a pleasure. I arrived at the studio an effieciently quick 1 hour and 10 minutes after I set off at 6:30am. Pleasantly early for our 8am call time. As with most of my shoots with Alex, details of what we were up to have to remain secret until public / press announcements are made. However suffice to say, the car was cool, the images were brilliant and the work was tiring but as always well worth it.

Assistants Tip: Buy a pair of decent grip / heatproof gloves. Hot lights are HOT. My pair of leather Arri Grip Gloves do the trick for keeping some of the heat out and are great for putting up and moving kit. The Arri gloves I have aren’t heat proof but they do the trick and I’d suggest getting something similar too.

Had an awesome shoot on Thursday with the incredibly talented photographer Glen Burrows Behind the scenes courtesy of him - check out his blog here. Shot in the Peak District, Derbyshire on and around Mam Tor. We had a 6am start and we’d travelled 400 miles for this shoot off the back of a lively shoot with ‘Crazy’ Spice Girl Mel B the day before. Using profoto kit we had 2 7B packs, 6 batteries, a soft box, strip light and spill dishes for 3 heads… Along with a colorama that was set up in the car park! The climbs up and down the 500m hill throughout the day were well worth every effort.

Assistants Tip: Carry some a few pieces of looped rope in your kit so you can tie the power packs to stands for much needed ballast on location. Sand bags obviously best avoided on hikes!

Images will be in the newly launched Mens Running magazine within the next few months. Keep your eyes peeled!

Had a wicked shoot with Pete Dadds photographer for Channel 4 earlier this week. One of the things I have always prided myself on is my organisation and reliability. I have always built ‘safety’ time into my journey to allow for train delays, strikes, cancellations, getting lost, etc. This can be irritating when you turn up to shoots 30 minutes early on a regular basis and you could really have benefitted from the extra sleep. However when you have the kind of monumental cock up I suffered for the first time ever and you turn up at the right road but in the wrong part of London… (guess which in the picture is the right one and which one I ended up at) suddenly you become grateful for the 2 years you have spent turning up early.

Google had failed me and I had failed to organise to my usual impeccable standard after a particularly late return from a shoot. So upon realising what was before me were residential blocks and not the channel 4 studios I dashed back across London sprinting between Tube stations and arrived 2 minutes late. I wasn’t happy with being late at all, but lesson learnt.

And we had a wicked, effecient shoot to redeem the day. All is well that ends well.