What I Look for When Bringing On an Assistant

For years I resisted bringing anyone else onto a shoot with me. Adventure work felt like something I had to do alone, partly out of habit and partly because I hadn't found a good reason to change. What eventually shifted my mind wasn't a single bad experience shooting solo — it was realizing how much energy I was spending on tasks that didn't require my specific skill set, energy I could have redirected toward the actual photography if someone else was handling the rest.

Once I decided to bring on an assistant, I quickly learned that the hiring criteria that matter for adventure work are almost nothing like the criteria that matter for a studio assistant. Physical capability, judgment under pressure, and a specific kind of low-ego reliability turned out to matter far more than photographic ambition. I go deeper into building out a small team around adventure work in The Adventure Travel Photographer's Playbook, but here's the core of what I actually screen for.

Physical Capability Comes Before Photography Skill

The first filter I apply has nothing to do with a camera at all. Can this person keep up on the actual terrain we'll be working in, carrying gear, for a full day, without it becoming a liability? An assistant who can't physically handle the environment isn't just less useful — they become something I have to manage and worry about, which defeats the entire purpose of bringing help along.

This sounds obvious, but it's the criterion most photographers underweight when they're excited about someone's editing portfolio or their eye for composition. Those skills matter eventually, but they're irrelevant if the person can't safely function in the actual conditions a shoot requires — a multi-hour approach, exposed terrain, or long hours on your feet with a pack.

I've learned to ask directly about someone's outdoor experience before I ever look at their photography work. Someone who hikes, climbs, or spends real time outdoors already understands pacing, layering, and how to manage their own energy across a long day, which removes an entire category of problems before the shoot even starts.

Judgment Under Pressure Matters More Than Technical Skill

Technical camera skills are teachable in a way that judgment isn't. I can walk someone through how I want gear organized or how I like a lens changed in the field, but I can't teach someone to stay calm and think clearly when weather turns or a plan falls apart mid-shoot. That's the trait I actually screen hardest for.

In interviews, I ask about a time something went wrong on a trip or a job and how the person responded, not because I expect a photography-specific answer, but because the pattern of how someone reacts under pressure in one context tends to show up again in a completely different one. Someone who freezes, panics, or needs constant reassurance in a stressful moment isn't someone I want managing a critical piece of gear on an exposed ridge.

The assistants who've worked out best for me are the ones who, when something goes sideways, default to problem-solving instead of anxiety. That trait shows up early, usually within the first shoot together, and it tells me more about whether the working relationship will last than any resume line ever could.

Low-Ego Reliability Over Ambition

It might sound counterintuitive, but I've learned to be cautious about hiring assistants who see the role primarily as a stepping stone to their own photography career. That ambition isn't a character flaw, but it changes the incentive structure of the working relationship in ways that can create friction on set.

An assistant focused on building their own portfolio is, understandably, thinking about their own shots even while they're supposed to be supporting mine. That divided attention shows up in small ways — a slower response when I need a lens changed, a moment of hesitation when I need hands free instead of a camera raised. None of it is malicious, but it adds friction I don't need on a demanding shoot day.

The assistants who've worked best for me are the ones who find genuine satisfaction in the support role itself — people who like solving logistics, managing gear, and being useful, without needing the shoot to also serve their own creative ambitions. That's a specific kind of person, and it's worth being patient to find rather than settling for whoever's available.

Reliability Around Gear Is Non-Negotiable

Adventure shoots put gear through conditions studio work never does, and an assistant's relationship with that gear has to be almost obsessive. I need someone who checks battery levels without being asked, who notices a lens cap left off before I do, and who treats a memory card like it's the only copy of the day's work, because on a remote shoot, it functionally is.

Early on, I made the mistake of assuming this kind of care would develop naturally with experience. It doesn't always. Some people are simply more detail-oriented about physical objects than others, and no amount of on-the-job training reliably closes that gap if the underlying habit isn't already there.

Now I test for it directly during a trial shoot, watching how someone handles gear when they think no one's paying close attention. Do they set a camera down carelessly on a rock, or do they instinctively find secure footing for it first? That instinct is either present or it isn't, and it's one of the clearest signals I've found for whether someone will actually protect the equipment they're responsible for.

Communication Style Under Time Pressure

On a shoot, communication has to be fast, clear, and free of unnecessary explanation. I don't have time mid-climb or mid-paddle to explain why I need something a certain way — I need an assistant who can take a short instruction and execute it without requiring a longer conversation about it in the moment.

That doesn't mean I want someone who never asks questions. It means I want the questions asked at the right time — before or after the critical window, not during it. Learning to read that timing is part of what separates an assistant who's genuinely useful in the field from one who's only useful in a calmer studio environment.

I've found the best way to evaluate this is simply watching someone work a real shoot rather than asking about it hypothetically in an interview. Communication style under actual pressure is hard to fake and hard to predict from a conversation alone, which is why a paid trial day has become a standard part of how I bring anyone new onto a shoot.

Why I Run a Trial Day Before Committing

Every assistant I've brought on long-term started with a single paid trial day rather than a longer commitment upfront. That structure protects both of us — I'm not locking into a working relationship based on an interview alone, and the assistant gets to see whether this kind of work actually suits them before agreeing to more.

The trial day isn't a test in a punitive sense. I treat it as genuinely useful work, paid fairly, on a lower-stakes project where a mistake won't cost a client relationship. What I'm watching for is how someone handles the actual rhythm of a shoot day, not just whether they can answer questions well in a pre-shoot conversation.

More than once, a trial day has revealed something an interview never would have — someone who seemed perfect on paper struggling with the physical pace, or someone who seemed unremarkable in conversation turning out to be exactly the calm, capable presence I needed in the field. The trial day has saved me from bad long-term hires more than any other single step in the process.

What I Don't Prioritize as Much as People Expect

People are often surprised that I don't weight photography ambition or editing skill very heavily when hiring an assistant, given that we're both working in the same industry. But an assistant's job, as I've structured it, isn't to be a junior version of me — it's to handle the logistics and support that let me focus entirely on the image.

I also don't weight formal outdoor certifications as heavily as raw field experience. A certification tells me someone has studied a set of protocols; real time spent outdoors, in varied conditions, tells me they've actually internalized the judgment those protocols are trying to teach. Both matter, but if I have to choose, I lean toward demonstrated experience over paperwork.

Similarly, I don't prioritize someone's social media presence or personal brand, even though that might matter more if I were hiring a second shooter rather than an assistant. The roles are different, and conflating the criteria for one with the criteria for the other is a common mistake I see other photographers make when building out their first small team.

How the Role Evolves Once Trust Is Established

The assistants I've worked with longest have all followed a similar arc. In the first few shoots, I'm giving detailed instructions for almost everything, because I haven't yet learned what they can handle without guidance. Over time, as trust builds, the instructions get shorter and the assistant starts anticipating needs before I've voiced them.

That evolution is the actual payoff of hiring well in the first place. An assistant who's reached the point of anticipating rather than just executing frees up a meaningful amount of my mental bandwidth on a shoot day, bandwidth that goes directly back into the creative decisions that actually require my attention.

Some assistants eventually grow into second shooter roles, once their photography skills develop and the working relationship has enough history to support that shift. That's a natural progression I've seen happen more than once, but it only works cleanly if the original assistant relationship was built on the right criteria from the start.

Red Flags I've Learned to Watch For

A few patterns have reliably predicted a working relationship that wouldn't last. Someone who negotiates hard on pay before ever proving field capability is often, though not always, someone who'll be difficult about scope and expectations later too. It's not disqualifying on its own, but it's a signal worth weighing.

Another red flag is someone who talks more about their own creative vision than about supporting mine during an initial conversation. That's not a character flaw in general, but it's a mismatch for the specific role I'm filling, and better to catch in an interview than after a shoot has already gone sideways because of divided priorities.

The last pattern I watch for is inconsistency between how someone describes their outdoor experience and how they actually move in the field on a trial day. A gap between the story and the reality is one of the clearest signs that someone oversold their readiness for the physical demands of the work, and it's exactly the kind of gap a trial day is designed to catch.

How Pay Structure Affects Who You Attract

The way I structure pay for an assistant role has a real effect on who applies and who sticks around. A flat day rate, paid promptly and without ambiguity, has attracted more reliable people than the vague "we'll figure out fair compensation" approach I used when I first started bringing on help, which mostly attracted people comfortable with uncertainty I wasn't actually comfortable creating.

I also pay for the trial day at the same rate as an established assistant would earn, rather than a discounted "audition" rate. That decision was partly about fairness, but it was also strategic — a fair trial rate attracts a stronger pool of candidates than a below-market one, and the quality difference in who's willing to show up has been noticeable.

Beyond the base rate, I've found that clear, upfront conversations about how expenses, travel days, and overtime on multi-day shoots get handled prevent a huge share of the friction that otherwise creeps into an assistant relationship later. Most of the disputes I've seen between photographers and assistants trace back to an ambiguity that a clearer conversation up front would have resolved before it ever became a problem.

I've also learned to revisit pay as an assistant relationship matures, rather than assuming the original rate should hold indefinitely regardless of how much responsibility the role has grown to include. An assistant who's earned more trust and taken on more independent judgment over a year of working together is doing meaningfully different work than they were on day one, and the pay should reflect that evolution rather than lagging behind it out of simple inertia.

This kind of proactive adjustment, offered before an assistant has to ask for it, has done more for retention than almost anything else I've tried. The assistants I've kept longest are the ones who never had to bring up a raise themselves, because I'd already recognized the shift in what they were actually contributing to the shoot and adjusted accordingly.

I'd rather have a slightly smaller margin on any given project and keep an assistant who's genuinely invested in the working relationship than optimize pay down to the minimum and watch good people drift toward photographers willing to compensate them more fairly for the value they've actually grown into providing over time. That kind of turnover costs far more, in retraining time and lost continuity on shoots, than the modest raise it would have taken to keep someone in the first place, which is a calculation that becomes obvious in hindsight but is easy to overlook when you're focused purely on this month's expenses rather than the longer, more valuable arc of the working relationship itself, viewed honestly over several full years of an actual working relationship, rather than judged narrowly and somewhat unfairly against just a single busy or unusually slow quarter taken entirely out of its broader, far more meaningful context across the full working relationship.

If you're thinking about building out a small team of your own, whether that's a first assistant or eventually a full crew, I walk through the whole process — hiring, pay structure, and when it actually makes sense — inside The Adventure Travel Photographer's Playbook.

Reflection Questions

1. If you've hesitated to bring on an assistant, is it because of cost, or because you haven't found someone whose judgment you'd trust in the field?
2. What tasks on your own shoots are you currently doing that don't actually require your specific skill set?
3. How would you evaluate a candidate's judgment under pressure without relying on a hypothetical interview question?
4. Would a low-stakes paid trial day reveal something about a candidate that an interview alone couldn't?

Dalton Johnson is a professional adventure and editorial photographer with over a decade of experience creating images on all seven continents. His client work includes Patagonia, GoPro, Arc'teryx, Four Seasons, Nike, Rivian, Big Agnes, Ford Bronco, and 160+ other brands. He runs Dalton Johnson Media as a full-service studio, from pre-production through post and distribution.