In this blog, I would like to share with you my photography routine that I follow every week. I want to introduce you to my routine and explain why I use it and why it works for me. Let's not take this any longer; here we go.

How often do I go shooting and how do I choose my locations?

In the last year, I have tried to increase the intensity of taking pictures, and I try to go out and shoot two or three times a week. Unfortunately, I'm not lucky enough to be able to spend all my time just taking pictures during the golden hours or plan my whole day to taking photos. And that's okay. I'm not saying that shooting only during the golden hour is bad, but shooting throughout the rest of the day also opens up a much larger window of time for shooting, if you learn how to work with it. That's why I try to have my camera with me every day and incorporate photography into my everyday life, rather than adapting my everyday life to taking photos. I also try to separate the days when I take pictures from the days when I edit them. I never do both activities on the same day.
And how do I choose locations for photos? I try to perceive the locations around me every day, even if I don't have my camera with me. I use notes on my phone, where I save places and times when I like the light, for example. If I see interesting framing or light, I copy the GPS position from Google Maps, and even add a small description of the place. I save the information on my phone, and if I don't have my camera with me, I can return to the location in the future

Warm up

Every photo shoot is preceded by a few steps, which I call a warm-up. Just as you warm up in the gym before a big performance, I also do some preparation before taking photos. The first thing I do at home is check the battery, because there is nothing worse than showing up at a nice location with great light but realizing your battery is almost dead. Another thing is checking the memory cards. Are they physically in the camera? Have I downloaded all the photos from the last session? Now I can format the cards before the shoot and have enough free space available for a new photo session.
And what is my warm-up? I often drink coffee before starting; it's a ritual of mine that helps me get into the mood for the given mission. After the coffee, I start taking photos of random objects around me for the first few minutes. Often, they are meaningless things, but this short photo shoot helps me get into the right mindset when I start thinking about the space around me. Just getting into the mood for the photo shoot. Sometimes, I turn over my shoulder on the street and see someone looking at me strangely for taking pictures of the tiles on the wall or a bin on the street because I'm just doing my warm-up session. :D Sometimes it's funny.

Let's shoot!

I take the session itself in the way that I go for a walk. I go for a nice walk without much expectation that I will take the picture of my life today. It helps me mentally detach from the fact that I took some nice photos last week that got a lot of response on social media, and now I have to take better photos than the last time. Lately, I've been taking more snaps. I try to take as many pictures of as many things and moments as possible and ideally alternate between as many locations as possible. Sometimes, when I like a location, I am able to stay there for a longer time and wait for a suitable object that would complement the meaning of the location. Sometimes it will be done in two minutes, sometimes in twenty, and sometimes not at all. In general, I try not to spend more than 20 minutes at one location. If I have empty hands after 20 minutes, I leave the location and look for another one. Alternatively, I save the location on my phone and come back to it in the future.

Meaning of the location - A woman with a suitcase at the train station

After photoshoot

After I return home from a photoshoot, the first thing I do is save the photos from the camera to my PC. If I do this right after I get back from a session, I know I can format the card immediately afterward. I drag and drop the files, and I'm ready for my next shoot. After transferring the data, I also charge the battery. I never edit photos on the same day, but I usually leave two or three days for editing them. Why? When I come back from a photoshoot, I'm often already tired, and I don't notice the details as much as I should. In the past, I often focused on my best shots of the day and neglected other shots when I was editing them right after shooting. I always edit the day's photos backwards, which means that I start with the last pictures taken because my first pictures are the warm-up ones, which I wrote about above. The last photos are usually the better ones because I'm already focused and pay more attention to the location and what's happening around me

My weekly photography routine

The most beautiful and the most unique Prague subway stations

Analog photography basics