Pay Per View - Part Two - Captain Frugal In The 2020's

Good morning. Welcome to a new decade. As it is 2020, let's get the Roaring Twenties joke out of the way straight up - that roaring in your head is the result of the New Year's Eve celebration. It will settle down in about two years... Now yesterday we made a frightening list of all the gear we've got and how many pictures it's actually produced. We can add another calculation to the paper - how much each picture has cost. If you are working professional, the cost of each image might be somewhat lower than the same item for the amateur. But the amateur may have been snapping off a lot more shots than you have - not being able to nail exposure, composition, and lighting in the manner in which you've become skilled. And you have the consolation that you have probably been paid for the successful images - the amateur hasn't. Well, turn that philosophy about as you like, you're both in a better position than the dilettante - the desk drawer photographer who takes the camera out only once a year. Their per-image cost can be frighteningly large. Is it a good thing to make each picture less expensive - without making it cheaper? It is - if you go about it the right way. Here's Captain Frugal's advice for the coming year: a. Look at that list - if there are items on it that you hardly ever use, either get rid of them or deliberately start to use them more. You bought 'em for some reason and now is the time to justify it. b. Look at the subject part of the list and see if there are things that you'd like to, or need to, do in the coming year. Will the gear you've got do it. Be honest with yourself. If you have the capability with your present gear, go use it. If you don't, go get it. c. Look at the bit that shows what you've actually done with the outfit. If it's been slim, grim, and dim...consider fattening up, cheering up, and smartening up. Go take more pictures of better subjects and take them better. d. Go learn. There are schools and clubs and workshops galore in all states. Make use of at least one of them this year. If it can't supply you with information about a pet subject, go to one that can teach a new thing. e. Weed. The garden if you must, but the hard drive if you can. Go back and look at your collection of images and see if there aren't some of them that could be improved. If you've left the pathway open for yourself by preserving RAW images and Lightroom files, you might be able to make better results than before. You might find that you cannot. This is a signal that your artistic tank is dry, or that you actually are pretty good at what you do. In either case, if you can never make a better image than the one that's staring at you, consider whether you need to keep the rest of the 468 RAW files that led up to it. That's a lot of memory space sitting there like electronic sludge. Finally remember that some images are just not worth keeping. f. Use it up, make it do. Your gear may have tens of thousands of exposures left in it before needing repair or replacement. Go use it and reap the images.