Geoff Frewin asked in a comment here the other day...
<blockquote>I know you often post photos of locations on the site, but would be interested to know both from yourself and any other writers if the taking of the Photograph in itself helps or do you use it purely as a record (reminder) of the location to refresh your memory?</blockquote>
Let me try and answer that very interesting question.

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I'm slightly worried when people read this blog and think I'm some incredibly organised writing machine. I'm not, honest. All I'm doing here is setting down some of the habits I've acquired over sixteen years of writing books. I'm still learning and always will be. My greatest discovery of recent times -- the book diary -- only came to me fully a year or so ago.

I've always tried to use photography to record locations. I think this started when I was researching the book that was to become first <em>Lucifer's Shadow</em> and now <em>The Cemetery of Secrets.</em> Back then I was shooting on film. I had three rolls as a result of ten days spent in Venice. I took them to be developed the day before I was coming home... and the camera shop ruined every one.

Things have been digital since then.

<a href="http://davidhewson.files.wordpress.com/2010/03/rimg0019_1.jpg"><img style="float:right;padding-left:4px;" src="http://davidhewson.files.wordpress.com/2010/03/rimg0019_1-tm.jpg" alt="RIMG0019_1.jpg" width="250" height="333" /></a>I don't take photos in order to get pretty pictures. Sometimes it's just the easiest way of making a 'note'. This is a sign down by the Tiber in Testaccio, an area I used extensively in <em>The Seventh Sacrament</em>. I wanted to set an important scene there so, naturally, I walked up and down looking, thinking, dreaming. One of the things I saw was this. It's a poster describing some of the local wildlife.

Amazingly enough there are coypu -- giant rats originally imported for their fur -- feral by the Tiber in the heart of Rome these days. That gave me an immediate idea for a passing detail you'll find in the book.

<a href="http://davidhewson.files.wordpress.com/2010/03/dscf0042_4.jpg"><img style="float:right;" src="http://davidhewson.files.wordpress.com/2010/03/dscf0042_4-tm.jpg" alt="DSCF0042_4.jpg" width="250" height="187" /></a>I also habitually snap signs and notices. With a half decent digital camera it's easy enough to capture the detail. Makes a lot more sense to me than writing down a note from the sign itself. This one is from the wonderful Palazzo Altemps by the way and records something I've never used and probably never will. That's another thing I do. Capture everything. You just never know.

Here are two photographs of a kind that help me too, though in truth they have very little in the way of memorable detail in them.

This is Saint Mark's Basin at sunset in February.

<a href="http://davidhewson.files.wordpress.com/2010/03/r0010275.jpg"><img class="alignnone size-large wp-image-3599" title="R0010275" src="http://davidhewson.files.wordpress.com/2010/03/r0010275.jpg?w=600" alt="" width="600" height="450" /></a>

This is a (very old) photograph of a vaporetto crossing the same stretch of lagoon in January.

<a href="http://davidhewson.files.wordpress.com/2010/03/vaporetto.jpg"><img class="alignnone size-large wp-image-3600" title="Vaporetto" src="http://davidhewson.files.wordpress.com/2010/03/vaporetto.jpg?w=600" alt="" width="600" height="444" /></a>

Both serve as reminders of something very Venetian that I need to get into these books if they are to bring the reader into the location in the story. The light in Venice is extraordinary. It's different not just by season but according to the time of day. That washed out blue you see above is bright and harsh during summer. That cerise sunset changes according to season too.

<a href="http://davidhewson.files.wordpress.com/2010/03/venice-jan-2004-002.jpg"><img class="alignright size-medium wp-image-3602" title="Venice Jan 2004 002" src="http://davidhewson.files.wordpress.com/2010/03/venice-jan-2004-002.jpg?w=225" alt="" width="225" height="300" /></a>Photographs help with atmosphere and local culture. Here's one I took during the writing of <em>The Lizard's Bite. </em>It's a pretty dull photo. A man lugging hunks of meat around a back street in Murano.

This is a story setting in a community suffering from severe economic decline. It's a long way from the flash and glitz of San Marco. A picture like this reminds me of that and that a perennial fact of life in Venice is the physical labour involved in living there. Everything has to be lugged around the streets by sturdy, hard-working people like this.

It's not an easy life at all.

<a href="http://davidhewson.files.wordpress.com/2010/03/dscf0046.jpg"><img class="alignright size-medium wp-image-3604" title="Dscf0046" src="http://davidhewson.files.wordpress.com/2010/03/dscf0046.jpg?w=225" alt="" width="225" height="300" /></a>Then there are architectural details too. Here's a rio, a small canal in San Cassian. It could be anywhere in the city. Look at the brickwork, the washing line hanging over the water. The windows, the balconies. The green shutters.

I could sit down and make notes of all that. But why bother when it can just be captured in a photo?

Looking back I suspect that very few of my photos are genuine aids to memory. I use them more for writing atmosphere and setting than I do exact architectural detail. They're there to help be build the picture of the world I want in my head.

That's exactly the case with the present book which is entirely set in a very cold Venice during carnival, much of it at night. I spent long hours walking parts of the city trying to capture the feel of the place. The photos I got mirror the atmosphere I hope I'm going to create in the book. Here's one example -- the Rialto arcades on a freezing February evening. I won't extract any exact description from this. But it reminds me what it was like at that moment. Given that the final revise of this book will take place in Venice in May -- when hopefully the weather will be much more pleasant -- that seems invaluable to me.

Finally there's one benefit that didn't occur to me until Geoff asked this question. When I try to see my coming fictional world through the lens of a camera I force myself to limit and define the locations it will contain. I don't feel happy writing a scene anywhere I haven't visited and recorded -- and very rarely do. So in that sense photography brings the story into close focus, fixes the potential locations, and urges me to get on and write the hard part, the narrative.

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