Why Should you Keep a Photography Notebook?

I found a brilliant post entry while searching for some infos on photos in notebooks.  I came across with this wonderful site & I fell in love instantly.  I never knew a photographer actually keep a notebook with themselves all the time whenever & wherever <singing like Shakira> And here is a note on why we should keep a photography notebook especially if you proclaimed as one.  This is suitable to any of us that is starting out as a photographer.  I hope we can be successful in this field :D.

This is a reblog & taken from Bumbles and Light. Credit to the owner.

Before digital cameras, photographers would keep notebooks to help them remember the various settings that they used for each exposure on a roll of film. They could develop the film and then go back to compare their notes with the outcome, deciding which settings worked, which did not and how they could either emulate the results in another shoot or what they should change for next time. With digital photography, we only have to look at our exif data on the computer to reveal our settings for each photograph, so why should we still keep a photography notebook?

It is still important that we have somewhere to make notes and record reminders. I prefer using a paper notebook because that’s how I work best, I enjoy writing by hand and having something physical to refer to, but you could keep notes on your smartphone using an app or any other electronic device you choose… although I find it’s best to use something that you can carry with you at all times. The notebooks I like to use have plain paper as opposed to ruled lines. I prefer this so that I have space to make drawings and sketches of ideas if I need to and so that I have room to make notes on previous ideas. If you go for a paper notebook, choose something sturdy as you will be using it and carrying it around often.





Notebook. No photographer should be without one!

- Ansel Adams

Having a notebook also means that you have something to refer back to when feeling uninspired. Hopefully the wonderful ideas you recorded on previous days will serve to inspire you on days when you may be feeling less creative.

What to Write in your Photography Notebook

Anything you like.

Use your notebook to keep track of those elusive concept ideas that you come up with in the dead of night, just as you begin to fall asleep. Ideas seem to strike at the most inopportune of times, I’ll find myself scribbling in my notebook while I’m waiting outside my son’s school for him to finish for the day, as I’m out working/dog walking, or as I’m brewing the morning’s coffee.

You can use your notebook to make a note of awesome locations you might see when you’re out without your camera, or perhaps in a car or on public transport and unable to stop. Locations that might work better at a different time of day, or a different season. Make notes and come back to them.

You can keep magazine clippings in your notebook to inspire you. Posing ideas from fashion magazines, interesting compositions, lighting or just generally inspirational images. Attach them to your pages and write notes alongside them.

As you’re editing, if you find an image that didn’t quite work but you’d still like to try and re-take it you can make a note of it. The location, why you think it didn’t work out the first time, ideas to try next time.

Keep notes of things you learn while reading or watching instructional videos and might like to try out yourself. You could be learning to use artificial lighting for the first time, use your notebook to sketch out lighting setups or to write ideas.

 

Eventually, your photography notebook will become almost like a journal of your art and thought processes. These notebooks are good to hold onto, as you would a regular journal, to look back on. You might find yourself inspired years later by an idea you scribbled down hurriedly while standing in line to pay for your groceries.

Why Keep a Journal?

source

Journaling grants you immortality. Think of the billions of people who have and will perish from the earth without leaving a trace of themselves behind. They vanish into the ether, completely forgotten in the annals of history. A journal helps make you immortal. It is an tangible piece of evidence to leave behind that you were here! That you lived and loved! That there was such a person as Jared Matthews who lived in Austin, Texas who thought and breathed and died.

- Brett & Kate McKay

This excerpt gives most of it on why we should keep a journal and this is only one out of many reasons on why we should keep a journal.  Maybe one journal at a time and that'll do.  Click the writers' name for more.  They'll inspire you and me.  I agree with the above saying.  We all naturally want to be remembered and always hoping that we could leave something that is worth for others to keep and perish.  Our stories are always inspiring to others just like how others' inspired us this whole time.  Well, another man's trash is another man's treasure.  As written by the same writers, they also mentioned in the same entry how our children and grandchildren will want to read it.  It's true!  Whenever I stayed over in my relatives' house, I wonder if there anything I can read and flip through.  So far, I just found some old photo albums!  

Speaking of the photo albums, now that we all love to take numerous photos, be it selfies and have them uploaded in the social media medium for everyone to see, that is one of activity of journalling.  I dare say that.  You can have your journal in your own way, be it as longest as you want or as short as you want.  Yes, that might be a good start for us newbies.  "A sentence a day" or "A line a day".  And yeah there are such books/diary/journal out there.  They even make it for commercial sales.