Over-Complicating

 

2414-Minolta X-700-Fomapan 400-023 stone banner pole holders - shinheung temple

I go through phases where I keep adding to the making and management of photographs until all the joy of the art is fouled with complicated procedures and detail.

For example, the last time I was out with my Nikon F6 film camera, I brought a Fujifilm X-T4 digital camera with me to test exposure and composition before committing each scene to film. Even though the meter in the F6 is excellent and I don't have a problem making proper exposures. On this photo excursion the X-T4 was connected to my iPhone by Bluetooth so I could record locations to the digital copies of the photos and copy that information to the film versions of the photos when I get them back from the lab. So, three devices to make one picture on a piece of film -- the shooting data from the F6, test pictures from the X-T4, and the iPhone to send location information to the X-T4. A lot to keep track of while out and about taking pictures. And this doesn't include the additional step of adding titles, description, keywords, and descriptive file names in Lightroom.

Seeing a film photo in Lightroom with so much detail is satisfying to the completist part of my brain, but is all that information necessary? Maybe if I were writing a book on photography or making pictures for a stock agency, but I'm doing neither of those things and after a morning out juggling cameras, lenses, and a phone to make sure everything has been perfectly recorded, I have to say that photography feels like a drag and a boring exercise in data entry.

And so this evening as I write these paragraphs, I'm telling myself to return to the Keep It Simple, Stupid principle and limit photo notes to a serialised file name that describes only who, what, and where. If a picture is good, it doesn't even need that much information, but a descriptive file name is useful for finding it later.