A Journal?
Do you want to re-energize your interest in photography and gain unknown perspective and clarity in your life at the same time? Then it is time to start a daily journal. Or a diary.
It sounds crazy. Of all the thousands of things you need to do each day why in the world would you want to add another task to the list? And a task such as this, that according to surveys, is one that most people say they wouldn’t want to do?
There are three supremely important reasons to keep a daily journal and once you start your own you’ll wish you had done it years ago.
- You need a journal to track personal growth and self-improvement. This allows you to reflect on your thoughts, feelings, and experiences, which can help you gain insight into your personal growth and identify areas where you can improve.
- A journal will help you process and manage emotions. Journaling can be a therapeutic activity. It can be a place to vent and express your feelings, which can help you feel better and more in control of your emotions.
- You can use it to document and remember important events. Keeping a daily journal allows you to document and remember important events, both big and small, that happen in your life. You can look back at your journal to reminisce and recall memories that you may have otherwise forgotten.
It’s much easier to do this if you think of it as a Photo Journal.
You don’t need to go all Zen and psychoanalytic when you start a journal. Just start writing. Anything. But while you are writing spend a little time thinking.
We don’t know how to think. We rarely stop and actually think about ourselves. Our lives. Our habits. We don’t ever just take a minute or two and really truly ask ourselves “What small little thing could I do now that would make my life, my family, my relationships, my work, my hobbies, a little better tomorrow than they are today?”
Think deeply! Ask why, why, why? Link to this article: https://medium.com/thrive-global/how-i-use-my-journal-to-create-my-future-and-achieve-my-goals-7f34746cae7d
Click here to start your own Photo Journal in Google Docs.
You will see immediate improvements in every area of your life.
It is unquestionable that keeping a daily will make your life better. Take a look at this interesting article by Benjamin P. Hardy.
And if we combine it while keeping our photography interest hovering in a corner of our mind, the synergy of the two will be truly surprising.
As you write in your journal, you will come up with hundreds of ideas for photos.
Think of your writing as both a Journal and a Photo Journal.
It is said that a picture is worth a thousand words. As you write in your journal, keep your photographer self active in the back of your mind. You will come up with hundreds of ideas for photos you would like to take to add to the things you are writing about.
When you document things you have done or places you have been, include a photo. A big part of journaling is recording your thoughts and actions of the day. You will find that you want to include photos and this helps you to remember to keep a camera handy and take many more photos each day.
This is how you learn to get better.
You may not be able to carry your DSLR around with you all the time, but you don’t need that to learn to improve your seeing skills as a photographer. Use the camera on your phone. The photographer is the one who creates the image, the art. The camera, the tool, is not what is important.
The combination of using your camera to explore and record your world and using your inner mind for reflection and self examination will truly change your life. Just stop for a moment and really think. As Socrates said “The unexamined life is not worth living”.
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