Mapping the way to second-chance photos
by Chris Nicholson

Some of your best photos for a given location will come not from your first visit there, but from your second, or third, or twentieth. On your first trip you may see a great waterfall, but discover that the water flow is only a trickle during the summer. On your second trip you may find that an area is filled with fields of wildflowers, but that the light angles are better at a different time of day, or even a different time of year. Each time you revisit a location, you're likely to find a new way of photographing it, even if that new way is not immediately possible.

But remembering all those new ideas can be hard, especially if you're in an unfamiliar region. That's why it's so important to take notes. You can write notes anywhere: in a pad, on the back of business cards, in a journal, on a micro-cassette recorder. Some digital cameras can even record audio notes, which you could use to save a message saying, "Try this shot again in autumn." But I like to take my notes on maps.

Maps offer several conveniences:

I can place a note about a location right next to its place on the map. That way I have notes about weather, light, seasonal preferences and directions all in one place.

The notes are automatically filed. If I were to write notes on index cards, I'd have to somehow catalogue them by region. But because my notes are on regional maps, they're already sorted; if I'm traveling to Maine, I just take my Maine map, and all my notes about Maine are with me, too.

It's less to carry. I would have a map with me anyway when traveling, but if I kept my notes in a separate book, then that would be yet one more thing to bring.

Because of this system, maps are my key to second-chance photos. When I'm traveling as a photographer, I may see a landscape that would make a great photo if only the light were better, or I may see an uninspiring summer scene that would make a wonderful winter image. Or sometimes I'll be en route to one location when I see something else that I want to shoot in the future. So I write it down on the map. Then I can use those notes to make future decisions about where and when to work.

For example, in the fall of 2000, I was photographing on a foliage assignment in Maine. While there, I stopped at Pemaquid Point Lighthouse, just east of Boothbay Harbor. I stayed for about two hours, photographing the scenic lighthouse in late-day light, and then with sunset colors in the sky. It was a good shoot. Still, after looking around the point, I knew that morning light would hit the area, too, providing opportunities for photos of a thoroughly different look and mood. I didn't have time to stay until the next morning, so I wrote my observations about the scene in my map, for reference for the next time I had to work in Maine.

Sure enough, a year later I returned north. I saw my notes from the previous year and was able to arrange to be at Pemaquid Point at sunrise. Again I worked for two hours, creating images that, even though they were of the same subject, provided a new and different treatment than my former work there.

I use DeLorme maps for my travel photography notes. The pages are large (allowing plenty of room to write) and they're detailed enough to show almost every road and land feature. Also, they map interesting sights common to an area: the Maine map shows lighthouses; Vermont, covered bridges; Arizona, Indian ruins. For a writing utensil, I usually carry a "space pen," because their ink won't freeze in cold weather and won't smudge when printing small, like a pencil will.

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