How to streamline photo shoot planning

The Shoot Is Won the Week Before

Almost everything that goes wrong on a shoot day was decided, or left undecided, before anybody picked up a camera. Locations that turn out to be north-facing, a wardrobe that clashes with the set, a subject who arrives with no idea what is being asked of them.

None of that is a photography problem. It is a preparation problem, and preparation is the part of the job that scales best because it can be turned into a checklist and reused.

One Document, Shared Early

We work from a single call sheet: the schedule, the location with its access notes, the shot list, the wardrobe, who is responsible for what, and one phone number for the day. Everyone gets it three days ahead, not the night before.

The value is not the document. It is that writing it surfaces the questions nobody had asked yet, at a point in the week where the answers are still cheap.

A shot list is not a cage. It is the twenty frames you have promised, so that the rest of the day is free for the ones you have not thought of.

Scout in the Light You Will Shoot In

A location visited at eleven and shot at four is two different locations. When we cannot scout at the right hour, we check the sun's path and take a phone frame from each position we are considering. It takes ten minutes and it has saved entire afternoons.

Build a contingency into the plan for weather and for traffic. If the fallback is decided in advance, losing the light costs you a shot; if it is not, it costs you the shoot.

Pack the Night Before, to a List

Batteries charged, cards formatted, everything against a written list rather than from memory. It is the least interesting habit in this article and the one that has prevented the most expensive mistakes.