Field Notes Camera
A photo app that forced you to write a sentence before it would save the shot.
- react-native
- expo
- design-experiment
An experiment in slowing photography down. The shutter worked normally, but the image stayed in a holding state until you wrote one line about why you took it. No caption, no save. The idea was to build a habit of intention - to end up with a roll of images that each meant something.
I used it on two trips and the notes were genuinely the best part when I reread them later.
It fought the moment it was trying to capture. The best frames happen in a two-second window - a gesture, a break in the clouds - and stopping to write a sentence meant missing the next three. Intention and spontaneity turned out to be the wrong things to force into the same step.
The honesty of the idea was right. The placement was wrong - reflection belongs after the shoot, not inside the shutter.