I did my Poynter project on a no kill animal shelter in St. Petersburg.

Now, the projects that most of us did probably would have been handled differently in a real-world situation. I spent a few hours at the shelter, but in real life, I would have spent more time. I would have called ahead and came during specific events: a new pet being taken in, a pet being adopted out, scheduled exercise situations, etc.

That’s not how things were because of time constraints. We called up potential story contacts and showed up shortly thereafter and captured whatever we could. But in some ways this was good.

It forced us to work with what we had, which was less than we would have normally captured under ideal circumstances. It forced us to maximize what we have.

I was in way over my head with a Canon Mark III. I normally use a prosumer-level Nikon, not a professional-level Canon.

The projects were fun and quite a learning experience. Best advice I can give you: select not compress.