Keeping a Photography Notebook

2024 Photo Journals

If there was ever one lament that I have, it’s about not always keeping a journal.  When we are young, we sometimes keep journals to record our thoughts, thinking that they are important - and they may certainly be so.  If if were not for diaries, much of what happened to ordinary people on a daily basis long ago would not have been recorded.  But I’m not discussing diaries or daily journals, but those notes that are kept to record what I do photographically.  I wish that I’d kept travel/photo journals 50 years ago, and even 20 years ago.  All I do have are all the photographic results from those outings, and in some cases, I did keep notes, but I was never fastidious about it.  I have some small notebooks where I have started with a few entries, and the rest is blank.  Some notebooks are the pocket style, and may contain only a single photo trip, with notes that were jotted down along the way.  I changed that in 2017, when I started to keep a journal of all my photographic activities, not just those taken on trips.  I’ve never kept notes on every roll of film that I have shot, as that’s just not as important as what I saw, where I was,  and what else was happening.  On a long trip, I will number my rolls, so that I can just enter the information later as to the camera and film stock that I used, and the date.  That works out well for me.  You can purchase photographic record notebooks that are essentially just a list of rolls with exposure information, if you are the sort of person that likes to keep that information, and I’m not.

From my 2022 Takumar Trek notebook - a list of films shot, 
all added after the trip was over.

Small photos, printed by the Kodak mini-printer

My preferred journals. 

I also decided rather recently, to stick to a certain style of notebook that is generally about 5.5  x 8 inches, and found that I can buy them in bulk from Amazon. These have brown covers, lined pages, and have 60 pages. (Image).  They cost about a buck each.  While for some people, 60 pages may be too little, I find that they are perfect for a long trip, or 2 to 3 months of activities.  I don’t want a whole year in one journal, because losing one would be bad enough, but to lose a many months or a year at once would be awful.  In addition, the smaller size takes up much less space in a bag.  So far, I have been happy with them.  Another journal that I like is the one issued under the Magnum Photos imprint (Thames and Hudson), which are just a bit wider, and with thicker paper, and 48 pages. They are also more expensive. Moleskine notebooks are nice, too, but a far cry from being $1 each!

These cheap notebooks are utilitarian, for sure.  But they do the job, and that’s what I want.  One thing that I often do is to include shots from my iPhone, when it’s appropriate, and for printing those I use a Kodak C300R camera/printer that does a great job with small dye-sublimation prints.  A good thing to carry on any trip.  The photos really help augment the journal entries.

June 2024, when I was working on the Kudzol developer

Now that I have been diligent/consistent about keeping notes, these journals have been very useful when I need to write about photographs that I have taken.  I find myself referring to them whenever I am working on a project.  I counted 160 rolls of film shot in 2024, and I used 6 journals.  There is no way that I can keep all that in my brain.  I may not know where the hell I’m going, but I do know where I have been!

Older pocket notebooks, some contain just a few pertinent notes, others are entire trips.

from a 2018 trip to Ontario

An entry for 2009. Marc Akemann and I did some night shooting.

How photographers keep notes and  organize their work is a very personal thing.  What works for me may not be what works for you.  But if you have a system, and you like it, stick with it, because you’ll be better off than just throwing your negatives in a shoebox.  I do know that having all of my negatives in polypropylene negative sheets and stored in 3-ring binders has served me well.  I can go into any year and find what I need.  It’s the notebooks about that particular roll of film that I lack, and I wish I’d been doing that since I started. I now have 25 years worth of binders, and I find myself going through them when I am working on a project. I used to make negative contact sheets, and lately I have started going through the years 2000 to 2010 to scan in the negatives.  I can do so much more now with the scans than I did with the darkroom then.  I have a lot of old work that I can use in upcoming zines, and it’s been fun to pore over those older negatives and find that I did get some pretty good results.

But what about if you just want to keep a log of exposures?  There used to be some very specialized notebooks for photographers, especially into the 1980s.  Perfect for large-format photogrpaphers, where every exposure can be unique, unlike the person shooting 4 frames per second.   For a while, those notebooks seemed out of print, but with the resurgence of film photography, various types of photo memo-style notebooks are now available.  Possibly the more useful one is from Mike Padua's Shoot Film Co.. as shown below.

In addition, a quick search also shows another one, but I've not examined it personally:

Of course, you can just use any blank ruled notebook to do the same, but having an organized layout fopr doing those records may be the better way to go, if you go that way.  These notebooks make a great deal of sense for large-format practitioners, since you can develop each sheet of film according to how you exposed it.  

As far as photography-related notebooks, there are many sizes and styles available online.  Etsy sellers are one source, as I have seen some nice-looking notebooks there.  I'm not a fan of spiral or wire-bound notebooks, as they can have pages rip out or the bindings get messed up over time.  Lay-flat notebooks are preferable to hard-bound notebooks, because they are easier to write in (at least to me).  In any case, make time to record your photo adventures, so that in the future, you won't be wishing that you'd done it (like me).