NSL Photography Tip: Add Important Photography dates to your Appointment Calendar

For all photographers using a digital camera, keeping the date and time accurately in the camera is very important.

The date and time of every photograph is embedded in the meta data for each image, each time the image is made and saved in the camera. These are important pieces of information for photographers.

The date and time in each photograph's metadata establish precisely when the image was made. It helps for verification during photo editing. It's tremendously helpful in later identifying images, and greatly assists photographers in organizing their images.

For those photographers who also use GPS devices with their camera, to embed the precise location of every image, ensuring the date and time of each photo is accurate, is even more important.

Photographers can't go wrong by maintaining the accuracy of their images' date and time data.

For those photographers in the US, and other countries which alter the time of the day in the spring and fall, from/to standard and daylight time, there are two times of the year they need to adjust their cameras' date/time settings. For many, unfortunately, that adjustment doesn't occur until they're halfway, or completely through the first shoot after the time change occurred, and many images have the wrong time embedded in their images' metadata.

Most people remember to change the time on the clocks in their homes, and their wristwatches. Fewer remember to change the time on the clocks in their kitchen appliances and their programmable home HVAC thermostat. Fewer yet, remember to change the time on their answering machines, DVD players, and other electronic devices. It's been my experience that almost no one remembers to change the time in their cameras.

About ten years ago, I was doing a shoot on the morning we changed to daylight time and forgot to set my camera's time ahead one hour. That was the last time I forgot.

I recommend to all who's country changes in and out of daylight time to do what I do to remember to change the clock in my cameras. Put a reminder to change your cameras' time in your appointment calendar to ensure you remember to make the change.

If you're in the US, that means you should start by putting in the reminder for this Sunday morning, November, 3, 2013. (Next year, 2014, daylight time beginnings on Sunday, March 9, and ends on Sunday, November 2.)

I'm looking forward to that extra hour of sleep Sunday!