I am preparing for several courses, including the special version of my signature “Advanced Flash” workshop. which you may recall I teach in Henry’s School of Imaging location in Toronto on March 19 with Special Guest Star David Honl (Yes, the David Honl).

Dave is doing this in Canada for one day only – sign up now!).

I am also preparing more runs of my new signature course “Event Photography”, which I ran Sunday and will run at Henry’s School of Imaging as a featured course repeatedly, starting soon-  stay tuned.

And this brings me to “preparing”. One of the subjects I teach in all my courses is how to prepare. Preparation is half the work. Preparation takes time but it guarantees great results. Doing it on the fly is less successful and more stressful.

So today’s tip: create checklists per situation. Three of them:

1. An event preparation checklist. This has names, addresses, parking details, shots you must get, etc.
2. A gear checklist. This contains all the equipment you need for that event.
3. A day-of-shoot checklist. This needs to contain names of people to shoot; moments to expect; shots you must not forget; camera settings for situations you expect; behavioural stuff; tech things to remember: everything you need to remember on the day. You carry this in duplicate – like everything else important.

Do you have those yet? If not, here’s your homework: go do it, make three checklists for a typical event you shoot. Questions welcome (and wait for my article on this in the June issue of Canada Photo Life magazine).