Making my mistakes early (a rant/tale of learning)

[n8]

I know everyone reading this has been there, but I finally had my shoot were I felt that if things could go wrong they would. I'm still a shoot-whatever-I-find-learning to edit kind of photog, but am finally branching out to doing favor shoots for friends and family for the sake of building a portfolio. Today I was shooting my friend's 7 mo old daughter...who last time wouldn't even give us a smirk, but did pretty well today. That was nice. I at least learned from the last shoot to mind my backgrounds better, and that not everybody loves the lensbaby. Who knew?

Of course I neglected the basics this time. Wind plus umbrellas equals bent umbrellas? Check. Not fully charged batters leads to waiting 20 seconds for the flashes to recycle? Check. I never thought I'd fill my 16gb card, but I did. Thank God...or at least Nikon for adding a second sd slot. I lied. I have considered the idea of filling 16gb, and consequently bought a 32gb...which was sitting cozy in my bag. Gah. I've also thought it to be good practice to shoot raw+basic jpeg so I can give the unprocessed previews to my friends. Forgot that too, but at least I didn't whoops on the jpeg side.

To top it all off, my dad was watching through the windows (our parents are still next door neighbors) and admitted to getting a few chuckles from watching the process.

Needless to say, I'm still hoping for a 10% success rate from this shoot as I figure this is my average of keepers to tossers. I'm hoping I mostly learned what not to do next time...which is a friends wedding.

[Grandpaw]

I think probably the most important thing that I have learned over the years is to have a back up for everything I have such as a second camera or flash, batteries and all the other goodies that I might need. It doesn't have to be the same thing but I do always have something that will get me by when needed, Jeff