Digital Photography Hacks

Keep a Digital Diary

Diaries enable us to document the big and little moments in life. And your pocket digital camera might be the greatest journaling tool of all.

Life moves so quickly. Before we know it, an entire year has raced by. Sometimes, we have difficulty remembering what we had for dinner last night, let alone what we did last month.

Keeping a diary helps give life perspective. Not only can we look back and appreciate the richness of our existence, but a diary can help us remember the specific dates that events happened. Many people don’t want to take the time to explain, in words, the big and little moments as they occur. That’s understandable. But our pocket digicams and camera phones can help us document our lives, and computers make organizing those images easy.

I’m going to walk you through an easy and effective way to keep a photo diary. Once you get a feel for the workflow and the types of tools you need, you can create a system that works better for you. Here are the necessary components:

Digital camera

You can use a pocket digicam, camera phone, or both. The key to a photo diary is having a camera available when events happen. It’s not going to work if your only camera is a bulky digital SLR. In this case, portability is more important than image quality. Not only does your camera record the images of your life, it also captures when they happened. Every picture you take is timestamped. For this to work properly, be sure to set the correct date and time on your ...