Free tool · four questions
How often should you actually shoot?
Shooting faster than the subject changes fills your project with noise and makes progress harder to see, not easier. Answer four questions and get the routine for your subject.
1 — What are you tracking?
2 — Can you get back to the exact same spot?
3 — How long are you planning to keep going?
4 — What do you want at the end?
Your routine
Once a week
- Photos by the end
- 12
- Time-lapse length at 12 fps
- 1.0 s
- Projects to create
- 3
- Best time of day
- Morning
Set this up once
Do not do this
Questions
Cadence, plainly.
How often should I take progress photos?
It depends on how fast the subject actually changes. Faces, beards, skin and seedlings change on a daily scale. Bodies, hair and gardens change on a weekly scale. Renovations change per working session. Shooting faster than the subject changes just adds noise.
Is it bad to take progress photos every day?
For a body, mostly yes. Daily body photos record water weight, food volume and lighting far more than fat or muscle, and checking daily is a reliable way to talk yourself out of a plan that is working. For faces and plants, daily is exactly right.
What time of day should I take progress photos?
The same time every session, and for bodies that usually means first thing in the morning before eating. The specific hour matters far less than picking one and never moving it, because light and body state both change through the day.
How long should I keep taking them?
Until you have at least 30 frames if you want a time-lapse, or at least three cycles of whatever you are tracking if you want a comparison. Stopping at week three is the most common way people end up with nothing to show.
The routine is the easy half.
Knowing you should shoot weekly does not put you in the same spot. The ghost overlay does.