Who the hell is James/NYC.?  And what makes him think he can tell me about photo assisting?

James grew up in the South & Northern suburbs of Chicago Il, and right after high school moved to the big mean windy city to
attend Columbia College in Chicago.

He had some great teachers, one of whom was a renowned pin-hole photographer, Ruth Thorn-Thompson.
Another was a studio lighting teacher (Who's name he can't remember) who, after working as a nuclear scientist for the department
of energy,  just decided one day to become a photographer.

This nuclear scientist-photographer showed up only three times during the whole semester.
He showed up the first day and said:  "There's only one rule you need to remember in lighting, there's only one sun!" and then left
the room.  The next time he showed up was for the viewing of a Helmut Newton documentary.
The last time was to review portfolios and get drunk with the class.

Just before graduating college James quit photography school to become a "Rock Star".

This started off with his joining a "Rush" cover band in Chicago, taking classical voice lessons twice a week for 5 years, and finally
ending up at Berklee College of Music in Boston.
To support his music habit there, James worked in photo labs mainly running B&W film, E-6, C-41 processes. He also did B&W
printing, C-Prints, and after hours when the boss wasn't looking taught himself Ciba-Chrome printing.
Soon the photo lab got boring and so he started building pinhole cameras from garbage around the photo lab and shooting long
exposures with E-6 duplicating film, B&W Ortho film, and anything else that wasn't
nailed down. Soon 5 other lab workers with too much time on there hands also started shooting pinhole, resulting in a clandestine
art exhibit in the mural room behind an hold 11"x14" copy camera.

The next step was this thing James had heard about called photo assisting. Seems that there were photo assistants working on
fashion and catalog shoots 3 times a week, and partying and taking pictures the rest of the week.
This sounded like a really good deal, so James asked people "How do you get to be a photo assistant?", but no one had any
answers or was willing to talk about it, so one day James just picked up the Boston Yellow Pages, opened up to commercial photographers and called the first guy listed. That number had been disconnected. The next guy was in his studio;
"Hi my name is James and I'm looking to be a photo assistant. Do you have any work coming up that you could use an assistant
on? I could intern and work for free?" 
"NO, NO, NO, James never ever work for free!", said the photographer (Gregg)
"Why don't you stop by in two days at 9:00am. You can hang out, see how things work, and if we click we can talk about showing
you what's involved in photo assisting."

"Hey thanks, I'll be there!". James was so excited,  he showed up 15 minutes early.
"Rule #1, early is not always best!"

So this was his entry into the very secretive world of commercial photography. This led to James working with some great
photographers in Boston, including on old school photographer that was a one time First Assistant to Horst P. Horst.

This photographer taught James more about lighting, metering, color temperature, and shooting in six hours than any combination
of photographers could have in six years.

Next was the still life photographer who would sit on his leather couch with his clients reading Playboy and Penthouse, while the 3
photo assistants set up and shot the jobs on 4x5. This was another learning experience since both of the more experienced
assistants wanted to light the set differently or shoot from a different angle.
The end result was that they would shoot it both ways and the choice would be made in the edit by the photographer.

James finally ended up working with a legitimate fashion & advertising photographer on a full-time/freelance basis who treated him
very well, paid on time, and let him use the studio and darkroom whenever he wanted. (That was  back when photographers actually had their own big studios and darkrooms.)