What I Always Check Before a Shoot Starts

Every shoot, no matter how experienced I get, starts with the same run-through before a single frame gets taken. It's not glamorous, and it's not the part of the job anyone talks about when they describe what they love about adventure photography, but it's the part that quietly prevents most of the disasters that would otherwise happen.

Here's what's actually in that pre-shoot check, and why I've never stopped doing it even after years of experience. If you want the full field system I use for running shoots that hold up under pressure, it's part of a bigger framework in The Adventure Travel Photographer's Playbook.

The Gear Check

The gear portion of the check starts with batteries and cards, confirming charge levels are where they should be and that cards are formatted with enough space for the day, not assumed to be fine from the last time I checked. This sounds basic, but it's exactly the kind of basic step that gets skipped on a day when everything feels rushed, which is precisely the day it matters most.

Lenses get a physical check too, not just confirming the right ones are packed, but that they're actually clean, that nothing's loose, and that any specialized gear needed for that specific day's conditions, filters, protective housings, rigging hardware, is present and functioning rather than assumed to be fine from the last time it was used.

I also do a quick redundancy check specifically: is there a backup for anything that would be genuinely difficult to solve if it failed mid-shoot. A second card slot writing simultaneously, a second body if the shoot calls for one, a backup battery source. This isn't about being paranoid, it's about acknowledging that adventure conditions fail gear more often than controlled environments do, and building in the backup before it's needed rather than after something breaks.

I also check the physical protection side of the gear check specifically for that day's conditions: is the housing or cover appropriate for the weather being anticipated, is the bag itself in good enough condition to protect against impact or moisture, and has anything been damaged since the last shoot in a way that hasn't been repaired or replaced yet. Gear condition drifts over time in small, easy-to-miss ways, and this check catches that drift before it becomes a problem in the field.

The Logistics Check

Beyond gear, I run through the actual logistics of the day: confirmed access or permits if the location requires them, a clear understanding of where everyone involved needs to be and when, and a realistic sense of how weather or light conditions might shift the plan over the course of the day.

Communication logistics get checked too, especially on remote shoots. Does everyone involved know the plan for staying in contact if the group splits up or if cell service is unreliable. Is there a clear point of contact if something needs to be communicated quickly. These questions feel unnecessary on an easy, accessible shoot and become critical on a genuinely remote one, which is exactly why I run through them every time rather than deciding case by case whether they're worth the few minutes it takes.

I also confirm the actual goal of the day one more time before starting, even on projects where the goal has already been discussed at length in planning. A quick, final confirmation of what the day needs to deliver keeps everyone aligned and catches any last-minute changes or misunderstandings before they cost time in the field.

Timing logistics get a specific check too: is the schedule realistic given travel time between locations, the actual pace of the activity being photographed, and the light conditions the day depends on. An overly ambitious schedule set during planning, before the actual on-the-ground realities were fully clear, is a common source of avoidable stress once a shoot day is already underway.

The Safety Check

Safety gets its own explicit pass, separate from the general logistics check, because it's easy for safety considerations to get folded into general planning and lose the deliberate attention they deserve. Depending on the activity and location, this might mean confirming everyone understands the terrain or conditions, checking that appropriate safety gear is actually present and not just assumed to be packed, and confirming that anyone in a position of risk on the shoot, a climber, a paddler, understands exactly what's expected of them and when.

I also do a quick mental check of my own physical and mental state before a demanding shoot starts. Fatigue, dehydration, or simply not being fully present affects judgment in ways that matter more in adventure photography than in most other genres, given how often decisions have to be made quickly in the field. Being honest with myself about my own readiness is as much a part of the safety check as anything related to gear or terrain.

For shoots involving other people in any position of physical risk, I make sure the safety conversation happens out loud, not just in my own head. Confirming everyone's on the same page about the plan and the risk, verbally, before the activity starts, catches misunderstandings that a purely internal checklist would miss entirely.

Emergency planning gets a final specific check too: does everyone know the basic plan if something actually goes wrong, where the nearest help is, what the communication plan is if someone needs to be reached quickly. This is the part of the check that feels least likely to ever be needed, which is exactly why it's easy to skip and exactly why I don't let myself skip it.

Why This Never Becomes Optional

The temptation to skip parts of this check grows with experience, not shrinks. A newer photographer runs through every step carefully because they don't yet trust their own instincts. An experienced photographer can start to feel like they'd notice a problem without a formal check, which is exactly the overconfidence that leads to a preventable mistake making it into an otherwise well-executed shoot.

I've kept this check consistent specifically because I've seen how easy it is for experience to create blind spots rather than eliminate them. A formal run-through, the same steps every time regardless of how routine a shoot feels, catches the specific thing that confidence alone would have missed.

How This Check Evolved Over Time

This wasn't a system I designed all at once. It grew out of specific near-misses over the years, a setting left wrong from a previous shoot, a piece of safety gear that almost got left behind, a schedule that almost didn't account for a critical light window. Each addition to the check came from a real moment where something almost went wrong, rather than from a generic list of best practices I adopted wholesale.

Early in my career, I didn't have a formal check at all, I relied on memory and general awareness, and it worked well enough until it didn't. The first time a genuinely preventable mistake made it into a shoot because I skipped a step I would normally have caught, I started writing things down, and the list has grown and been refined steadily ever since.

I've also learned to periodically remove steps that no longer serve a purpose, rather than letting the check grow indefinitely. A check that's too long stops getting run properly, since people, myself included, start skimming rather than genuinely verifying each item. Keeping the list focused on what's actually prevented real problems, rather than everything that theoretically could go wrong, keeps it useful rather than becoming its own source of friction.

The version of this check I run today is genuinely different from the one I ran five years ago, and I expect it'll keep evolving as I take on new kinds of projects with their own specific risks. Treating the check as a living system rather than a fixed document is part of what's kept it actually useful rather than becoming a formality I go through without really thinking about it.

How the Check Changes by Project Type

While the core of the check stays consistent across every shoot, certain project types add specific items worth flagging separately. A remote location shoot adds a heavier emphasis on communication devices, emergency plans, and confirming that anyone else on the trip knows the itinerary in case something goes wrong. A studio or urban shoot removes most of that layer but adds its own considerations around permits, access windows, and coordination with locations or venues.

Shoots involving other people, whether that's a client, a subject being photographed, or a small crew, add a layer focused specifically on making sure everyone involved understands the plan for the day, not just the technical and safety side but the actual shot list and schedule. A miscommunication about the day's plan among people rarely shows up as a technical problem, it shows up as wasted time and missed opportunities, which is its own kind of preventable failure this check is designed to catch.

Weather-dependent shoots get an additional check specifically around contingency planning, confirming there's a real backup plan if conditions change rather than just hoping the forecast holds. I've learned not to treat a favorable forecast as a guarantee, and building an explicit backup plan into the pre-shoot check, rather than only reacting if weather actually changes, has saved more than one shoot day from becoming a total loss.

Recognizing which category a given shoot falls into, and which specific version of the check applies, is itself part of the skill. A generic check applied uniformly to every situation misses the specific risks that matter most for that particular project, which is why I think of this less as a single fixed list and more as a framework that adapts to what a given day actually requires.

What I Do When the Check Reveals a Real Problem

Occasionally, running through this check surfaces something that genuinely threatens the shoot, a piece of gear that isn't working correctly, a weather pattern that's changed since the plan was made, a safety concern that wasn't apparent until actually standing at the location. How I respond in those moments matters as much as catching the problem in the first place.

My default is to treat a real problem surfaced by the check as a hard stop rather than something to push through under time pressure. It's tempting, especially with a client or crew waiting, to talk yourself into proceeding anyway, telling yourself the issue probably won't matter. I've learned that instinct is almost always wrong, and that the entire value of running the check in the first place is undermined if a real finding gets overridden by schedule pressure.

When a problem does surface, I try to communicate it clearly and immediately to anyone else involved in the shoot, rather than quietly trying to work around it on my own. A clear, early explanation of why a delay or adjustment is necessary is almost always received better than a vague excuse offered after something has already gone wrong. Clients and collaborators generally respect a photographer who catches and communicates a real issue far more than they'd respect one who pushed forward and had something go wrong as a result.

I also try to build a small amount of schedule buffer into most shoot days specifically to accommodate the possibility that the check reveals something that needs addressing before shooting starts. A schedule with zero margin turns every finding from the check into a crisis, while a schedule with even a modest buffer allows a real problem to be handled calmly and correctly rather than rushed through under unnecessary pressure.

Looking back at the handful of times this check has actually caught something significant, none of them felt dramatic in the moment. They felt like a few extra minutes of mild inconvenience, checking a setting, double-confirming a plan, noticing a piece of gear needed attention. That's exactly what makes this discipline easy to undervalue and easy to skip, since the payoff is almost always the complete absence of a problem rather than any visible reward, and an absence is much harder to appreciate than a clear win.

Teaching This Habit to Someone Else

When I bring on an assistant or second shooter for a project, one of the first things I try to pass along isn't a specific technical skill, it's this pre-shoot check itself. Teaching someone else to run through it consistently does more for the overall reliability of a shoot than almost any other piece of onboarding, since it means a second, independent set of eyes is applying the same discipline rather than relying entirely on my own attention.

I've found that explaining the reasoning behind each part of the check, not just the steps themselves, makes it far more likely that an assistant will actually internalize it rather than treating it as an arbitrary box to check. Understanding why a particular step exists, what specific problem it's designed to catch, tends to produce someone who adapts the check intelligently to new situations rather than following it rigidly without real understanding. That deeper understanding is what eventually lets an assistant catch a problem the original checklist never explicitly anticipated, which is really the whole point of building genuine understanding rather than rote compliance in the first place, on any team, in any kind of work, whether it's photography or something else entirely.

Watching someone else learn this habit has also sharpened my own understanding of it. Explaining the reasoning behind years of accumulated small adjustments forces a kind of clarity that running the check silently on my own never required, and more than once, walking someone else through it has surfaced a step that no longer made sense or a gap that had gone unnoticed.

None of this takes very long once it's a genuine habit, a few minutes at most. But those few minutes are consistently the highest-value minutes of the entire shoot day, because they're the ones most likely to prevent the kind of problem that can't be fixed once the day is already underway. Building this kind of consistent pre-shoot discipline into every project, not just the high-stakes ones, is part of the bigger system I cover in The Adventure Travel Photographer's Playbook.

Reflection Questions

1. Do you run a consistent pre-shoot check every time, or only when a shoot feels high-stakes?
2. Has experience made you more thorough with pre-shoot checks, or more likely to skip steps?
3. Do you have a real communication plan for shoots in areas with unreliable cell service?
4. How honestly do you check your own physical and mental readiness before a demanding shoot day?

Dalton Johnson is a professional adventure and editorial photographer with over a decade of experience shooting on all seven continents. His client work includes Patagonia, GoPro, Arc'teryx, Four Seasons, Nike, Rivian, Big Agnes, Ford Bronco, and 160+ other brands. He runs Dalton Johnson Media as a full-service studio, from pre-production through post and distribution.