I was sitting at my desk today and noticed my notepad sitting there beside me. I had just dug my camera out of my bag so I snapped a shot of it. This notepad saw a significant amount of use over the last couple weeks. I took a bunch of pictures recently as a favor for some local Crossfit gyms. I've mentioned it before so I won't go into great detail, but it was a good learning experience. The greatest challenge was lighting in the gyms and off camera flash. I began writing down everything I was learning so that during the day of the shoot (knowing I was going to be rushing around and forgetting things) I could reference this notepad and try not to miss ideas/tips/advice that I had planned to use during different shots. I attained a list of the names of individuals that were showing up for this shoot. Once I had the names I then assigned a specific "crossfit" exercise to each athlete so there was not indecision and time wasted during the shoot (athletes showed up in pairs and I had 15 mins per pair). Finally I had a list of names and I knew what exercise I was going to have them do. Over the next couple days I wrote, re-wrote, and then wrote some more on this list only to tear it up and start over. I am not kidding, when I started, this notepad was twice as thick. I would write the names and exercises and then literally draw a floor plan laying out how I was going to light each subject and give myself pointers on where to shoot from etc etc. In all reality, I had this thing memorized by the time I actually started shooting. What this notepad helped me out the most with was visualizing each and every shot so that I took my own indecision (not to mention apprehension) out of the equation so that I could stay quick and efficient. During the actual shooting I couldn't tell you how many times I referenced this notepad, but it wasn't even close to the amount of times that I had intended to. It was still absolutely crucial to me being relatively successful though. As I said, I had it mostly memorized so I didn't need to reference it as much, but it was still there in case I did. Secondly it enabled me to envision each shot and have a picture in my head for each athlete so I knew what to set up before they got there etc.
The poor notepad now is sitting and collecting dust on my desk at work. It is waiting. Waiting to leap into action whenever I decide what I want to do next.

Here are the pictures I ended up taking.
[url] http://www.pbase.com/ccasey/crossfit_photo_shoots [/url]