Journal Entry for Wednesday, Dec 7th

Make a Checklist and Check it Twice Yesterday I went out to take some photos only to find that the event that I wanted to capture was on Saturday, and not the miss-advertised date I had found in a newsletter. The good new was, that as I was getting my camera out of the car and preparing for some picture taking, I noticed that I had failed to check the battery before leaving home and that it was almost depleted. The thing is I have a “Pre-Shooting Session Equipment Checklist” on my phone and failed to look at it before leaving the house. Stupid! Furthermore, now that I am going to be shooting in RAW + JPEG mode, resulting in the need for much more available space on my SD card, I failed to make sure there was enough room for the intended pictures. Upon returning home I made sure that I had backups of the 4,032 pictures that were currently on my SD card and then set out to re-format the card – refer to today’s second photo tip. Today’s Photo Tip: Make a “Pre-Shooting Session Equipment Checklist”. Of course after you have made a detailed checklist, you must be sure to review it prior to going out into the field for each and every photography session. Click here to view my equipment checklist … My Equipment Checklist. Today’s Photo Tip: Always Reformat Your SD Card. When clearing space on your camera’s SD car always format instead of erasing pictures. Formatting your memory card wipes it clean and rewrites any pertinent camera information. Erasing your images does not. So always format your cards to minimize the risk of any data corruption. NOTE: Always insure that all of the pictures on the card have either been saved to your computer or backed up on some other type of storage media.

Today's Food for Thought: "There are no rules for good photographs, there are only good photographs." – Ansel Adams