Documenting while Photographing

Bettina Walter on the "Clearly it Works" blog posted a tidbit of advice that photographers should photograph the name card in addition to the artwork when they take photos at an exhibition or a gallery. This makes it wasy as she says "to [give] credit, where credit is due."

This is an excellent idea. It is something that I will try to keep in mind when I am out shooting. This could be extended to many other things you photograph beyond artwork. Usually both hands are occupied holding the camera, which means I don't have one free to write. Most of the time I am not thinking of documentation when I photograph. This did come back to haunt me when I wanted to classify the flowers I decided to include in the book. If I had thought of this at the times when I was at a botanical garden, I could have photographed any placard or name tag they had near the plants.

Other ways I can think of using this is to photograph a street sign and building number near or at a building that you've photographed. I have a shot of birds on the ledge of a building and I know the general area that I took it at but not the specifics. I may never need to know the specifics but it would have been good information to have.

Since so much photography is digital now, and there are large capacity memory cards, you don't have to worry a lot about wasting a shot. You could keep all the reference photos or delete them after saving the information into an image catalog or into the IPTC/EXIF metadata information of the photo.