# A photo a day....



## mnclayshooter (Oct 24, 2014)

Just curious - I sometimes wonder if some of the folks on here ever actually go out and use their gear. (a sort of tongue-in-cheek jab at the volume of posts - no offense meant by it). Pro's (people who make their day-to-day living) not withstanding, as it's obvious that they need to be out shooting. 

How often are you out there shooting? 

I made a personal challenge - try to take one meaningful photo every day... with priority order for equipment being my DSLR, my P/S, my cell phone, my laptop camera (albeit pushing the limits of "meaningful"). 

I'd define meaningful as: well thought out, well composed, well framed etc... with consideration of why would you even care if you had a photo of whatever the subject matter is.


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## Marsu42 (Oct 24, 2014)

mnclayshooter said:


> Meaningful as: well thought out, well composed, well framed etc... with consideration of why would you even care if you had a photo of whatever the subject matter is.



As I'm doing mostly wildlife and people/pet portraits, I cannot really plan how it works out - if conditions happen to be peachy I can shoot myself silly and go home with 1000 shots, while on other days nothing will work out at all and you barely postprocess together the absolute minimum requirement.

What I try to do is to *produce* at least one good shot a day, and this includes difficult postprocessing shots which to my dismay often takes much longer than I'd like to.


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## mnclayshooter (Oct 24, 2014)

Marsu42 said:


> mnclayshooter said:
> 
> 
> > Meaningful as: well thought out, well composed, well framed etc... with consideration of why would you even care if you had a photo of whatever the subject matter is.
> ...



I hear ya - this is pretty much how I shoot too. I found that once I started challenging myself, my overall ability set got a lot better.


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## Marsu42 (Oct 24, 2014)

mnclayshooter said:


> I found that once I started challenging myself, my overall ability set got a lot better.



Well, I went the other way - instead of pushing myself without need and coming up with mediocre crap that needs heavy postprocessing, I now have more experience to recognize when I'm likely to get keepers that are up to my current standard - and then really go for it.

I do like a challenge at client shootings when I have an hour to produce commercial shots of pets and their owners - both often having an attention span shorter than my guinea pigs at home. But when just producing stock shots, I'd rather switch between shooting and postprocessing days.


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## DominoDude (Oct 25, 2014)

Since I prefer birds and wildlife my number of shooting sessions are not at all evenly spread out in a year. Sometimes I also lack motivation and resources to get out and shoot. So to sum it up - I don't shot as often as I would like to.
At least I've been out on 80 separate occasions so far this year.


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