Why I love keeping a journal for Street photography
- Hipster_cph
- Feb 1
- 5 min read
Updated: Feb 1
January 2025
Blog #11
Street photography journal - a revist
Almost a year ago I wrote a blog post about “Power of Journaling in Street photography”. Since then, a few things have been added to how I keep and use a notebook for Street photography.
The first blog was more about why journaling is important. This still holds true. So, if you want a refresher then go ahead and read the earlier post.
In this blog, I will focus on my experience using a dedicated notebook and what it has been like for the last year or so.
I will also share how I use my notebook and a few key learnings.
Why a dedicated notebook?
Since I started my Youtube channel back in late 2022, I’ve loosely kept a notebook. When I say loosely, I mean I used it to remember important content ideas.
My head was filled with so many ideas back then (well still is) that I needed a way to keep track of all of it.
There wasn’t a particular order to the notebook, that’s why it quickly became a mishmash of every thought I had on content creation and street photography back then.
I still use the notebook to this day – it has everything from my loose ideas and thoughts to complete script ideas, various trackers (I love trackers). More on this later.
To be honest I’m a very structured person but that initial notebook kept bothering me, because it essentially was a brain dump. I could never seem to get it organised into a proper structured notebook with a clear outline.
That lead to the next phase of notebooking.
50 shades of keeping a Notebook
I started to do research into how to keep a notebook and look into the many ways how others use and kept notebooks. What seem a like a forever research project I saw many great options and ideas I could get inspired by.
One of the earlier inspirations was the whole bullet journaling, a smart system that was created by Ryder Carroll and had taken the notebook community with storm.
Of course, I was very late to the game and entered a phase where the original bullet journaling concept had evolved quite a bit by the community.
I found the original bare bone version best suited for my needs and opted to try it. By then 2023 was just ringing in and what better way to start a new year than with a fresh new notebook.
I love me some moleskins and I had accumulated a few pocket size that were just waiting for me to use them.
I think my intentions were good, but I quickly realized that I didn’t want or need a task management system in written form. I’m pretty good with to-do lists and have a good system that works for me. Also I usually keep myself accountable on the tasks that needs to be done. Maybe years of being a management consultant has had it effect on me.
SO I went of another search and found another great Youtuber who talked about dividing a yearly notebook into 4 or 5 section that you are going to focus on throughout the year. I liked the initial idea, but when executing I found it to broad and I didn’t have 5 focus area I could diligently fill out (read I didn’t have much to say on the topics).
So that concept got scraped. It wasn’t what I was looking for.
Then for a while I didn’t use any other notebook than the one that kept bothering me – sporadically.
2024 - a breakthrough year
As 2023 came to a close, and other year started. I still had the desire to be better at keeping a notebook – also the huge pile of unused notebook kept me motivated.
After a slow start the ”final” breakthrough came.
Again, the Youtube algorithm helped me on my quest. I came across a very unique channel dedicated solely to the passion for keeping a notebook and the many systems there are out there.
The most eye-opening fact for me was how many ways one can keep a notebook: from commonplace, catch all notebooks, notebooks on specific topics, compendiums, diaries to actual journals.
Phew… my brain exploded. .so much information to process. I watch almost every single video on the topic to understand all these types and formats in much more detail and just out of curiosity.
In a very short period of time, I understood and realized how I would use my notebooks going forward.
As of writing I have a handful notebooks that I keep – Street photography is just one of them. I use a mix of catch-all, commonplace, compendium and journals.
For the rest of the blog, I will focus on my dedicated Street photography journal.
How I keep a dedicate Street photography journal
I can briefly mention that I’ve experimented a bit with different notebook brands. I can admit that I was a moleskin fangirl. But since I've moved on to use Leuchtturm notebooks as I find the paper quality is better and the pages are conveniently numbered. For my catch-all I use Moleskin Cahirs and Fieldnotes – a recent addition.
When keeping a notebook the need for a good pen is obvious but not a must. I have three different pens I use.
The first one I bought was the Parker ballpoint. A great pen that I like to use broadly. The next is a beginner fountain pen from Lamy. This was to try out the fountain pen space. And the last pen is my most expensive fountain pen or any pen for that matter – a Sailor PRO Slim fountain pen. I love them all but the Sailor makes it a joy to sit and write in my notebooks.
Ok. Let's move on to the how I keep a dedicated notebook.
The main reason is to note down ideas and inspiration for Street photography. This is anything from inspiration for writing my monthly blogs, newsletters and Youtube video ideas and concepts.
I have also added quotes I like, a few trackers related to my Street photography i.e. spending overview to film shooting overview and many other kinds of trackers. I love to track things.
Lastly I’ve added photography techniques, and concepts I need to remember and some important settings I also tend to forget.
All this used to be digital notes or screenshots and for some reason I could never seem to find the information when I was looking for it - this caused both mild frustration and annoyance from time to time.
Now I know where I can find specific street photography related information - and it’s all in one place.
Key learnings from keeping a Street photography journal
Now in 2025 I’ve fully integrated keeping notebooks in my daily rutine.
The format is still changing ever so slightly to meet my needs and I make small adjustments here and there.
But overall I’ve finally found a good way to use a notebook, and I find it natural to pick up and enter a record.
It took some time to figure out why I needed to keep a notebook, for what purpose and how to do it.
The great thing is that I found not only one purpose but many for a few important topics that interest me.
I still use digital notes due to the sheer fact that it's just super convenient at times where I don’t have my notebook within reach.
As I've mentioned in a few of my Youtube videos - I have been slowly adding more and more analog activities in my daily life for the past couple of years - and this is a major cornerstone.
However, the great thing about keeping a physical notebook is that I can go back and see what I was thinking and feeling at the time of entry, and how much I’ve moved on in different directions and how my interests evolved and changed when it comes to Street photography.
Keeping a dedicated Street photography journal is my record of street photography evolution of sorts.
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