Pemwick Shoots

A shoot goes wrong the way a shopping trip does — you remember the missing thing on the way home. Pemwick Shoots is the notebook that stops that happening: what you are there to photograph, written down before you arrive.

Why a written shot list works

Once you are on location you are running three jobs at once: talking to whoever is in front of the lens, watching the light, and making technical decisions. Recall is the first thing that goes. A list moves the remembering to the quiet part of the week, so the loud part only has to tick things off. Surgeons and pilots use the same trick, and neither of them is short of expertise.

The second effect is subtler. When the safe frames are already committed to paper, you stop circling them, and the last twenty minutes of a session — usually the best light and the most relaxed subject — go on the frames you would never have risked otherwise.

Inside the app

– Shoots. One card per session with the kind, the place, the day and a one-line brief. Open it for the shot list: tick frames off as you get them, add new ones as they occur to you, watch the progress bar close.
– Poses. Twenty-three prompts across portrait, couple, family, product and street work — each one written as a direction you can actually say out loud, not a mood board. Shuffle when the room goes quiet.
– Kit. A packing list split across the camera bag, the light and grip, and the small things everyone forgets. Tick as you pack, clear it before the next job, add whatever you carry that nobody else does.
– Guide. Four pages of field notes: how the light behaves through the day, what each focal length says about the subject, the pre-departure check, and how to run the session itself.

How a job runs

1. Add the shoot with the place and the day. Write the brief in one sentence.
2. Break it into frames. Six is usually enough; the list will grow on the day.
3. Pack against the kit list, then work the shot list on location and tick as you go.

Nothing is uploaded, because there is nowhere for it to go — the whole notebook is one database file in the app's own storage. There is no account, no sync and no advertising, and the single permission in the build is the short buzz you feel when a frame is ticked off.