I've observed that many photographers, for the longest time, use physical notebooks or journals to write down, keep notes and organize records about their pictorials. I've seen, for example, a lot of photographers use Moleskine for this purpose. Photographers carry with them and use a physical notebook as a means of recording all sorts of essential technical information and creative ideas that may come to them at any point or stage of the entire photographic process which usually begins with a pre-production meeting and ends with a post-production analysis. Some photographers, such as Irving Penn, have designed and consistently use their own forms to note necessary and important information. Having a physical notebook handy helps photographers in writing down bits and pieces of information they need to remember, as well as to them keep organized and up-to-date.

When Aperture was first introduced a little over two years ago, much of what photographers needed to write down have been automatically noted for them direct from their digital cameras and straight into Aperture. This includes almost all of the photographic technical information about the shots in the form of metadata such as aperture, shutter speed, ISO rating, among others, as well as typing in keywords and really helpful and useful IPTC information. But while this has been a major leap in development, there was no space alloted for writing expository notes concerning creative aspects about the shots. Technically speaking, everything that a photographer needs to know is there. But in terms of jotting down information on create styles, concepts and approaches, among other things, no space was made available. Photographers still have to rely on physical notebooks or journals, such as, naturally, the Moleskine, to take notes.

However, things have changed. In Aperture 2.1, and with OS X 10.5.2 installed, you can now write as much text as you like for, on and about any of the selected photos. This means, if you want to note down particular or specific information concerning an image, there is now an in-Aperture solution that will allow you to take notes from within the software itself.

This new capability is now available through a tool called Aperture Caption Palette. While not exactly "native" to Aperture, it is inherently possible and available through the awesome power of AppleScripting technology. The Aperture Caption Palette is an AppleScript-based tool that you can download for free. Once installed, you can select it from the scripting menu located at Apple's main Menu Bar on top. When you click on it, a flexible and resizable floating window will appear directly in Aperture.

One interesting characteristic of the Aperture Caption Palette is that the size of the type is much bigger, and more readable, than Aperture's built-in text fields. You can therefore comfortably type-in the text without squinting close to the monitor. And if you don't like to type the text, the Aperture Caption Palette supports voice commands, text entry and it can even read back texts that you've entered with the MacSpeech Dictate. Both the Aperture Caption Palette and the MacSpeech Dictate are technologies you can put to immediate use in noting down all sorts of creative (and yes, additional technical) information straight from within Aperture. The introduction of this additional feature by way of ApleScripting technology allows you a new way of expanding on your workflow which can be beneficial in helping you note down valuable creative ideas and essential technical notes. Among the numerous important advantages of this feature, one benefit to a photographer is the ability to sort through all creative issues that may arise, and which have been noted down, while deeply involved in a photographic project.

In addition to this new feature, a photographer may however still choose to use a physical notebook, and, at the same time, a companion software to Aperture where they can write, maintain, and organize notes, and embed all sorts of data. Two obvious choices comes to mind. First is Microsoft's Word, which, of course, is like using a big gun to kill a tiny mosquito. And second, is the built-in TextEdit on the Mac, which, for all its elegant simplicity and power, may not be as useful as you need or want it to be. The thing is, Word is "super-powered" while TextEdit seems to be "under-powered." What we are looking for in a companion text editing software is something that's somewhere in between.

There are actually countless third-party text editors available for the Mac. I've tried a lot of them. One that I like the most is called MacJournal from Mariner Software developed by Dan Schimpf. Personally, and from experience, I think MacJournal is the perfect third-party software for a photographer who needs to take down notes or add all sorts of information in various formats. It's a medium sized software that doesn't take as much resource as Word does, and it can do a whole lot of things such as organize notes that you won't be able to just as easily or adequately do in TextEdit.

Among the many really nice features and capabilities that I like in MacJournal (now at version 5.0.2), which for me, makes it an ideal companion software to Aperture, includes the ability to:

• easily and quickly organize and move around notes and data using the software's excellent sidebar tool;
• write in a non-distracting full-screen mode;
• send, export and share notes in text or PDF format through email;
• create and broadcast audio notes through podcasts;
• and, openly distribute the information through an online blog.

To a lot of photographers working passionately in their respective fields of photographic interest, photo shoot projects are not just a matter of getting the job professionally done. All pictorials, whether commissioned or self-assigned, represents a great working experience. And part of that experience lies in the tradition of preserving it by keeping detailed and accurate written records. A photographer's written records accentuate the milestones not only to mark the stages of completing the work, but more importantly, it is a means of nurturing one's personal growth out of the entire photographic experience. And without a doubt, new and better technologies from software such as Aperture, among others, helps us in achieving this.

[Note: Photo in screenshot by Dominique James/The Playground]