Once you own a digital camera, you can take extra images for negligible cost. Don’t use the capability to take nearly identical pictures of the same subject. That just clogs up the editing pipeline when dispose of them later. One of the worthwhile uses of free images is capture signs and brochures that describe the subjects of your photos. Visiting the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum near Tucson, Arizona, I took this photo of an unusual plant called willow groundsel. This picture doesn’t reveal what is so unusual, but a photo of an accompanying sign keeps the memory alive.

When taking pictures of descriptive signs it’s best to show some of the object, in this case the willow groundsel flowers, in the picture with the sign. This helps avoid confusion about which sign goes with which plant. Sometimes you may take the picture of the sign before the plant, sometimes you may take the sign after the picture of the plant, and sometimes you may not take a picture of the sign at all. Modern digital cameras have lots of pixels, so even a small image of the sign will be usually be readable when enlarged in Photoshop. It is rarely necessary to take both a far and close view of the same sign.

Here is the text of the willow groundsel sign:

The plant (Do its friends call it Willie G? Does it have friends?) is indeed stinky, but it was only obnoxious within about five feet. That’s fortunate because Museum had planted it about twenty feet from the refreshment stand.

Occasionally, there is an elaborate text-heavy sign near an exhibit. Don’t be deterred, trust the camera resolution. This odd plant, a boojum, deserved some explaining.

The large sign showed a full grown version and a version with leaves.

The text explained the origin of the name boojum.

Photos of signs will help you recall what you saw, and will provide material for writing captions and preparing slide shows. Besides, they don’t cost anything, so they can’t hurt.