Just going over the basic checklist of what matters in photography. The things that fight frustration and low productivity.
This is not the gear list, or even about work flow, but more about the things to keep in mind when hunting out images sitting on the couch talking yourself out of looking for them.
1) Light is everything. The quality, quantity, what you do with it, how you treat it and how you see it. Light is everything. Everything.
2) Doing is always better than not doing even when the stars are not aligned. You never know what will happen if you try, but guess what your success rate will be if you do not.
3) Take for you, not for what you think others will like or how they will judge you. If you are not true to yourself, then what are you doing it for?
4) Accept the bad days, learn from your mistakes, be patient, be persistent.
5) Learn to see your work how other see it (not the same as shooting for others, see point 3). As photographers we can all spend too much time thinking about our gear, technique and processes. This is necessary at a basic level, but remember, no one else cares about the effort you go to. The rest of the world just wants to see the end product and they don’t care how you got it. This is one of the advantages of printing, it gives you a more critical eye for your own work before and after.
The one “winner “ from of a frustrating morning in beautiful light and a lovely spot. Heavily cropped, sloppily taken (hand held with the 75-300 zoom maxed out), this image is the one and only that really spoke to me out of 180 odd, but that is a better success rate than some days.