Katherine Bickford

A fish boat at Fisherman’s Wharf in Comox

Besides taking pretty pictures of all things natural and man made incursions into nature, I also find myself shooting stills of planes, trains, and ships of all sizes and types.

Photography is quite easy, but sometimes getting a good shot of things can be difficult and require some thinking and cleverness to get in a good position where the entire subject is framed. That’s not enough for me though as I want to know what it is that I am looking at, details such as the name, year of manufacture, and who made it.

That can be the tricky part as you need to see the name or registration or fleet number, depending of course on what you are shooting. In the image above I could not see the fish boat name or registration number, so I moved and shot the image below.

A partial name…

Why do I care? Simple – it’s the journalism part of photojournalism. A vanishing skill that is along with basic proofreading and editing, necessary to make sure that the story we tell is accurate.

The name of ships, airplane registration marks, and train fleet numbers are important when accidents happen and news outlets and investigatory agencies are looking for images. If I tag photo’s with this information it makes their lives easier and mine more profitable.