We all want to get out more and have more opportunities to photograph and play. I realized a while back that I got out a lot more often than my friends who also work the same 40 hour a week schedule. I wondered why they weren’t camping, hiking, and photographing (or insert your passion here) as much as I was. I realized that quite a few people only have a short trip or vacation a year. I have an acquaintance that went camping overnight and that was the trip of the year for them. I cringe at the thought. In this case more may be better!
This article is all about how you can get out at to photograph (or whatever you love) 50 days or more each year. I could get out too photograph 250 days in a year and keep my full time job if I really pushed everything to the limit. That is right, shoot 250 days in a single year with a family, a full time job working 40 hours a week and only 12 days of vacation a year. You can get out lot more too!
Last year I was pretty lazy, and only racked up about 50 days of actual photography. I honestly played with the kids and watched a lot of movies in the park here in Vegas. I spent a lot of my time doing other things. I could have gotten out to photography a lot more often. I made the choice to be lazy and not travel as much. Beware choices like this lead to only one vacation a year, and often just a day or two at that. Follow the above methods to get out more often. This year I am going to buy a house and start a new job, but I decided that I will get out at least 50 days this year, and if things are going well, I will get out more than 100 days before December 31 of this year.
Here are the ways that you can get out to photograph 50, 100, or 200 or more days a year.
The 50 day a year plan
So let’s start off with the assumption that you get two weeks of vacation a year. That is a measly 14 days (we will count Saturdays and Sundays for reach our number goal). You will need to make good use of the vacation days you have. I plan personally to use my vacation days for longer far away trips were extended time is best used. I get 12 business days for vacation so if I plan carefully I can easily stretch that into almost 20 days of photography including weekends, and holidays that are already free days. We will assume you can only take two weeks; this gives 16 days if you take off on a Friday, and take two whole weeks and that extra weekend. 34 days left to figure out.
A side note, I basically do everything possible to not use annual leave/vacation for things I don’t have to. I won’t for example use a leave day to stay home and putter around the house or for running errands. These are special days that are paid, and I use them for vacations and photography.
The last 34 days are easily taken on weekend trips. At only two days at a time that would take 17 weekends. If you managed a few weekend trips aligning with a holiday that usually falls on a Friday or Monday you have a few 3 day weekends, and reaching 50 days would take fewer weekends, about one every three weeks. If getting out is a priority this is easily managed.
50 or more days of photography a year can be done by anyone with a regular 5 day work week. Other people can easily reach this as well, they just need to look at their free time and arrange it to be used for photography.
The 100 days a year plan
So now that we see 50 days of photography a year is easily accomplished lets set our sights a bit higher.
We will start with the assumption that we will get the first 50 days just like we did previously. So next we need to figure where more days to photograph in the field will come from. Here are a few ideas.
- Take more weekends off. You would only need to take 25. That would be a total of 42 weekends spent traveling. That may be kind of hard especially if you are not single.
- You can negotiate to work a 4 day work week with 10 hour days. This is what I have done. Then you would have your normal vacation time, and only need to take about 28 weekends.
- Go for partial days of shooting and still get in a full day of work. This can be done easily by heading out for a sunrise before work, or sunset after work or combine a sunset and sunrise with some camping and night photography (shooting before heading to the office was a favorite of Galen Rowell).
Reaching 100 days of photography in a year will be a bit of a challenge and test if you really want to get out there. But here again, a person with a semi flexible schedule can easily reach the 100 day threshold if they focus on it and make it a priority! You can give up TV time to get out too photograph right?
200 days and beyond!
This will honestly take a dedicated and die hard effort to reach. Heck reaching 100 days a year is a serious effort. I am willing to bet many professional photographers don’t regularly get 200 days in the field in.
For this you will have to use all of the above tactics to their fullest. Let’s break down what we can do with the above all together.
- 16 days of vacation.
- 80 days from shooting 40 two day weekends.
- 104 days from 2 times a week shooting a sunrise or sunset before or after work each week of the year.
That would bring us to 200 days a year of photography. Sounds like a lot? Well there are still 165 other days where you don’t do any photography to balance things out.
If you had 3 day weekends, you would more easily be able to reach this goal, and wouldn’t need to take as many weekends out for photography. If you got the 3 day weekends and shot each one along with the 16 days vacation and 2 times a week getting out you would reach 261 days of photography in a single year with out any of those days overlapping. If you went out 3 mornings during the weekdays you would realistically be able to reach 300 days photographing if you did this along with the other tactics outlined above. You may be able to extend that even more by adding whatever official holidays you get in there. If you manage a McDonalds or something similar though I am pretty sure official holidays won’t help you out, that is why I haven’t included them at all. Not all would be full days, but there is a lot of photography time there.
Making it Work Practically and Financially
To really make 50, 100, or 200 or more days of photography work you would have to be totally dedicated to the cause. You would also have to give up luxuries while you were out there to be able to afford the continual trips (unless of course you are loaded!).
A major key to being able to getting out that much is also in where you head out to. I admit going to the city park that many times in a year may get old, and you might get labeled as weird (okay maybe really weird).
We often get tunnel vision on where we want to head out to photograph. I dream of Glacier, Yosemite, Redwoods, and Rainer National Parks, and places further away. I often neglect places that I could visit almost daily right around me. I neglect but could easily visit Death Valley, Valley of Fire, Joshua Tree, Zion, Bryce, Page Arizona and Lake Powell, the Grand Canyon, Mojave National Preserve, and the Beach in Southern California all from Vegas with little effort. In fact 200 or more days shooting in those places would barely scratch the surface.
Consider how you can travel for less. I have a smaller car that gets great mileage that lowers the cost of trips. I camp more often than not (often in no fee areas) and save lots of money and have more shooting opportunities (besides I am there for the photography not the luxury). I find friends to head out with and split the costs with them. There is lots you can do to go cheaper and longer.
Make a trip calendar out of where and when you will go this year and start getting out to photograph more often. You will become a better photographer, and become a pro on those places close to you that you can visit often. Many professionals have built their careers doing this. Two that pop into mind are Tom Till, and Tom Mangelsen (the Tom part is a coincidence). Tom Till still gets out and shoots 300 or more days a year, a lot of that in his own backyard of Moab (he is a pro so I guess he should get out 300 days a year!). He has become well know for his collection of images made in this area, all close to home for him. So think about the amazing places close to home you could get to know better. If you take the chance to visit a place more often you will be able to get far better images than people who can only visit for a short time as they travel from far away.
Last year I was pretty lazy, and only got out to photograph about 35 days. I honestly played with the kids and watched a lot of movies. I could have gotten out too photograph a lot more often. I made the choice to be lazy and travel and photograph less often. Beware of choices like this they lead to only one vacation a year, and often just a day or two at that. Follow the above methods to get out more often. Make the choice to get and do more of what you love! This year I am buying a house and starting a new job, but I decided that I will still get out at least 50 days this year, and if things go well I will get out more than 100 days this year.
I hope this has broadened your horizons on how you can get out too photograph more often. There really isn’t any reason a lot of us can’t get out and shoot a lot more!
Where is your favorite local shooting location? What are you tricks to getting out more often?
