I like project photography….as evident by a few blogs uploaded. To compliment that I want to addressing the concept of ‘journaling’… It is a simple process but one that adds to your overall result.
In life….we meander, don’t we? Today we do ‘this’, yesterday we did ‘that’….two weeks or a month or 6 months ago we did ‘this and that’…. It all adds up, but usually our ‘this’s and that’s ‘ run together and we forget what we did. Like a snake crawling in the grass, we meander, we eventually get someplace but in the process we fail to record in images alone; the big picture.
That is where journaling comes into play. I started to journal about my photography 8-9 years ago when I was leading a group of birders into the jungles of Ecuador to bird. I journaled where we were, what Tom saw, or how Pete tripped on a log etc . Since that adventure, and not so soon after, I began the journaling process for my street photography.
So what is in the box? I journal about the mechanics, the light….what I captured and where. I journal about my thoughts and what worked or what I needed to return to. I journal about my reflections too. For you see, since I enjoy social documentary and I couple it with photo-projects, my journals become one element to the finished product. I carry around a small notebook and make a point to record the day. When my images come to life, not only do they speak to the event recorded on the negative but the journal adds a new dimension to how that shot was taken and why.
I enjoy it….