Take Notes

Sine part of the purpose of writing this blog is to give you an idea of the “life” of a professional photographer, I figure that I’d try to include a few “every-day” lessons. One lesson that I would like to share with you is the benefit of keeping notes. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve wished I remembered how I previously lit something. Many clients come back and want you to do “some more” photography for them and they’d like it to match the previous stuff you’ve done for them. A few years back, I started making notes on some of the jobs I did. Sure, some jobs I forget to document, and it comes back to bite me, but all-in-all, taking notes has paid off and I’d really suggest that start the habit.



There is one down-side to taking notes. It’s easy to get lazy and just refer to the notes instead of tackling a similar, but new lighting challenge. Why not just light this thing like I lit it last time? It worked then, right? Well, mostly because you’ll never grow as a photographer, that’s why. I pride myself in constantly improving as a photographer, so why would I not try to improve my lighting on EVERY shot? Why light it like I did a month ago, or a year ago? Aren’t I a better photographer today than I was then? I hope so…



Having said that… There will be times when you need to match an old job, and when that happens, it’s really good to know how you did it. So keep notes. I like to make little drawings and document the lights that I used and the direction and sometime the power of the strobes too. I usually like to write down the lens I used and sometimes even the aperture I used, and other times even the distance from camera to subject.



These drawings really came in handy with today’s job. Without my notes, I would have had a really tough time matching the shots form a year ago, but since I had them, it was a breeze…



You think clients would know better than to leave their products at the studio overnight. :+)