I'm not big on taking pictures. The way I look at it, it's enough to preserve a sight in your head. I'd rather record things verbally, like with my blog or this memoir group.
When Laura Ingalls Wilder was young her sister went blind, so she was always describing to her what she saw in words. That was good training for her as a writer. My mother told me a lot about her youth, yet after her death I felt there was still a lot I hadn't learned about her.
When I had a paper diary instead of a blog, I used to write about my dreams a lot. That's another good exercise for a writer, because writing about a dream means taking various, diffuse sensations and bringing them together into a narrative, to the extent that you can.
My big hero is Samuel Pepys. He managed to describe his life and activities in an authentic, unaffected way. The National Post used to reprint his diary one day at a time, which is a good way to read it since that's the same pace at which he wrote it.
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