Our first collection program started with a borrowed camera, a printed checklist, and an assumption that the hard part would be the technology. A year and several hundred sessions later, the checklist is longer and the assumption is gone.
Local operators are the technology
The best field leads know which entrance the crew actually uses, which manager will say yes, and which hour the light is unusable. We stopped treating local knowledge as a nice-to-have and started hiring for it first.
Gear is the easy part
You can buy cameras. You cannot buy a habit of checking sync before every session. Most of our early failures were process failures wearing a hardware costume.
Data needs a home before it needs a model
We once recorded a beautiful week of sessions and spent the next one rebuilding an upload path. Now no collection starts until storage, naming, and review are ready to receive it.
Schedules slip, so design for it
Permission delays, weather, and staffing are not exceptions. They are the operating environment. A plan without slack is a plan that will be rewritten in the field, usually at the worst moment.
Trust compounds
The sites that invited us back were not the ones with the best equipment. They were the ones where we did what we said, left the room as we found it, and shared what we learned. That reputation is now our most useful collection tool.
Good field data is a record of a relationship as much as a record of a task.
Next year we are taking these lessons into more regions, longer sessions, and harder environments. The checklist will get longer again.