I want to write on the back of my photos
Remember when we had to send off film to be developed? As soon as I got my photos back, I’d always sit down and go through each photo, writing small notes on the back of it … who or what was in the photo, where was it taken, when was it, what trip was it on, etc.
I want to be able to do that on my iPhone and as far as I know, I can’t.
I realize that in Apple’s iPhoto there are features such as Faces and Places to automatically apply some of this data to the photos. However, there are many use cases that are not covered by just people and locations.
A few weeks ago, I was at the Louvre in Paris. I’m not the type of person who reads every single sign and description in a museum. Instead, I gravitate toward what looks interesting, take it in, and then jot down the artist and the name of the piece to so I can about read it later (rather than take up valuable time in the museum).
As I explored the Louvre, I took photos of what caught my eye. But, I ended up with a minimum of two photos for every piece of art. One photo of the actual art, and another photo of the little descriptive card that notes the artist and name of the art … it shouldn’t have to be like this!
Why can’t I take one picture of the art and then simply tap to add a short note to that photo? Pretty basic, right?
iPhoto’s Faces and Locations do not solve this problem for me. And, wandering a museum is just one use case. Here’s another example … imagine you’re at a restaurant, and you take a photo of your order. The photo itself is amazing. But, how will you remember the name of that dish, the price, the ingredients? Of course, you can go look it up online or in the menu. But, wouldn’t it be helpful to just be able to add brief note to the photo to jog your memory later?
I could think of a ton of other examples, but hopefully you see my point. It’s amazing that so many people have a camera in their pocket today. It’s changing the way we communicate and tell the stories of our lives, forever. But I think the simple feature of being able to add notes to photos could help us become much better storytellers.
It’s great to have that photo as a visual reference, but sometimes the photo doesn’t speak for itself.
Sometimes you need a short little note to capture details that the photo can’t do on it’s own.
Sometimes a photo is not worth a thousand words.
If I’m missing something, or if you know how to do this already, please let me know!
