Let’s get one thing out of the way first: We did not become photographers to worry about mundane issues like data management, right?

When I first started in professional photography, I was operating on a shoestring budget with no clients. In those early days I was working on the worst-case assumption that it might take years to make the business viable. To stave off starvation I kept expenditure to a minimum. Working as a total newbie in what counts for a medium-sized city in New Zealand, squeezing an assistant out of the budget was something I didn’t even consider. The money would have come straight out of my mostly empty pockets.