“Writing in a diary is a really strange experience for someone like me. Not only because I’ve never written anything before, but also because it seems to me that later on neither I nor anyone else will be interested in the musings of a thirteen-year old school girl. Oh well, it doesn’t matter. I feel like writing.”
― Anne Frank, The Diary of a Young Girl
Anne Frank kept a dairy and she named it. My own diary as a child was nowhere near as poetic as Anne Frank. The choppy scribble of what friends I liked that week and what friends I hated pressed into the pages, curiously disconnected from my emotional state of self. My early dairies were reflective of two things: 1) How cautious I became, and 2) how undisciplined I was at that age. Now, years later, I revisit the idea of a diary.
In combing through hundreds of photos, I often wished the photographer had added his or her notes to the photos. Random photos of tea in the Middle East to a crowded marketplace stimulate my curiosity and imagination. Context would have helped me as I put together social media posts.
In looking ahead to possibilities of travel to places I have never been, I am thinking of a photo diary more seriously–a photo journal for each place I visit.
When I get home from wherever I have been, I can put those notes with the photos into a Shutterfly photo book, but also, add them to Dropbox and add some pertinent notes to it for the purpose of future social media posts.
How do you keep a photo journal? I’m looking for ideas.