Photo Trip Log

A photo trip log is a good way to refresh your memory. It comes in very handy when you want to find a photo location again if your photos aren’t GPS tagged, and a photo log is very useful when a photo editor wants the details on one of your photos. This photo is of two pages out of a total of four pages of notes I made on April 25, 2011.

I keep travel and photo notes in a spiral notebook when I travel in order to refresh my memory later on. I keep track of distances and travel times and good places to eat and stay (and a few places NOT to eat or stay the next time I am in the area).

I make notes about pictures taken, the subjects (and where and when) so I can cross check the dates and times embedded in the photo’s metadata with the dates and times in the trip log. At the end of a long, busy trip it is hard to keep the days straight, much less the times and locations of photos that don’t have any classic identifying landmarks. My photo log keeps me from asking: “Hmmmm, was this photo of petrified dunes taken at Arches, Capitol Reef, or Zion?” (Zion.) And “Which turn off do I take if I want to find this location again?” (Go one mile past the east entrance, stop just past the bridge and go right.)

Sometimes I keep track of the temperatures, and I include whatever else I might want to refer back to. For example, I chatted with photographers Gary and Tim at Inspiration Point (and took a picture of them). Tim talked about an inspiring time at the summer intensive photography program at Rocky Mountain School of Photography (RMSP). I grabbed my trip log and made some notes. When I got home I looked up the school and the prices, said “Oh my!”, and bought a few good photography books instead. Incidentally, one of the classes Tim took was was taught by Robert Glenn Ketchum who is a terrific landscape photographer.

At the end of the trip I take pictures of all the pages in the trip log and put them with the photos from the trip. That way the photo log doesn’t get lost from the photos.

As you can see from the bottom of the right hand page, I play the “license plate game” each year.