It is essential to distinguish the photographic approach to evaluate a personal project.

It often happens to hear from the authors conflicting statements about how correct it is to face a photographic project.
There are those who do not use assistants, fixers, intermediaries etc. and there are those who make extensive use of them.
Words of professionals in the sector anyway, people who in their statements are talking with the necessary experience.
So who should you listen to?

One thing that is often overlooked is the nature of the photographic project.
Today photography has so many identities. In its most authorial form there are two contexts that greatly influence the photographic approach:

Commissioned
Many photographers are offered commissioned work which, through their personal vision, they will go to photograph considering the customer’s request. In these cases the photographer often has a limited time to develop a project, sometime far from his own country , and this affects the way he works.
Being organized and optimizing the time available will make the sensitization process in a given situation faster.
In certain conditions, the photographer must also be able to deliver the shots to the customer quickly, directly from the shooting location. Having a fast workflow therefore becomes necessary. Knowing how to manage all this is not easy and it is a process that requires time and experience to become so effective as to make the work authorial and personal, despite the conditions that lead you to compromise given the pressure exerted on the most creative and free component.

Personal or “Long Term”
In this situation the author has no external conditions apart from those imposed by himself.
He develops an idea, designs it, produces it, edits it and proposes it. Many times it does so over time, without a date to consider for the closure of the project.
In this case the photographer has no conditioning, even if behind this work there is the experience of being able to structure his own work and in a certain sense being the client of himself.
Planning a project is fundamental in this case and, in the long run, it will be decisive on its success.
Success is not necessarily determined by its saleability, but many times it is simply decided by the satisfaction of the author in seeing a result that satisfies him or her.
Many times these projects are defined as “Long Term”, in the situation in which the realization lasts in a period of time ranging from 3 years upwards. A status that allows the photographer to enter the project without the mechanics of commissioned work and without creative compromises due to a specific request to be satisfied in a short time.

There is no correct way to go. There are two situations that can also coexist together in a professional status.
Two conditions that can help evaluate the useful words spoken by one photographer rather than another.