Its always the little things in life that count....

Trips that I'd took months planning and being systematically focussed on the agenda on hand does play an important part that helps in getting what I want. And often too, little else.

Stop along the way sometimes and smell the flowers of humanity enroute to your final destination. Its more enriching. And rewarding.

Working on one story at a time is tough and inefficient. Photography and its subjects can take on a myriad of story directions and while working on one angle, I'd often have in stock a list of my other stories at their various levels of construct. I'd probably have 4-5 stories with just less than a handful of workable pictures. Maybe a couple with a sizeable working materials and yet even more that are mere concepts or ideas still hatching themselves in my mind.

I might have a great opening and closing all ready and set up but not much of a main body to show.

So to get things moving along at a qucker pace, I normally try pick some materials a little here and there while keeping in mind the primary objective of each trip. If there're no flowers to smell and 'pick' along the way, its no big deal. But always keep a look out for these opportunities.

This aside, keeping physical or soft folders of different projects help me juggle and manage on these stories much better without the danger of losing focus.

In a typical folder, I'd typically have notes scribbled on a skeletal outline of the main thrust of a story. Within this frame work, different annexes that make up the different body parts of a story are created. Workable images are categorized and filed according to the appropriate annexes I think they should go in.

With such a structure and a system of sectorizing by annexes, I find that I can run a photo 'chop' shop too when I sometimes combine different but related (closely or vaguely) content and still come up with an entriely new original yet hybrid story....sort of like Lego playing bricks.

My memory is bad and I hate writing. To get around this, it helps to just simply stop being lazy and putting down facts and situational details of a photo down on paper during the actual shoot itself.

This has helped me. Its given me more time with my family as well with shorter and more efficient time on the keyboards.

The End