Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is…Does Anybody Care?

It’s that time of the year again-where we move our clocks forward or back(this, of course, is depending on where you live). In this case, it is time to “Spring ahead”. I definitely prefer Daylight Savings Time ending-where we gain an hour of sleep by “Falling Back” instead of losing an hour when we “Springing Ahead”!

Even though I understand the WHY, I never really looked into the origin of when this all started. It’s an interesting read… Feel free to skip down three paragraphs if you are not interested in the history.

Daylight saving time (DST), also known as daylight savings time or daylight time (United StatesCanada, and Australia), and summer time (United KingdomEuropean Union, and some other countries), is the practice of advancing clocks (typically by one hour) during warmer months so that darkness falls at a later clock time. The typical implementation of DST is to set clocks forward by one hour in the spring (“spring forward”) and set clocks back by one hour in autumn (“fall back”) to return to standard time. As a result, there is one 23-hour day in late winter or early spring and one 25-hour day in the autumn.

The idea of aligning waking hours to daylight hours to conserve candles was first proposed in 1784 by American inventor Benjamin Franklin. In a satirical letter to the editor of The Journal of Paris, the American inventor suggested that waking up earlier in the summer would economize candle usage and calculated considerable savings.[1][2] In 1895, New Zealand entomologist and astronomer George Hudson seriously proposed the idea of changing clocks by two hours every spring to the Wellington Philosophical Society. He wanted to have more daylight hours to devote to collecting and examining insects. Though the idea received some serious consideration in 1907 in the United Kingdom when British resident William Willett presented it as a way to save energy, it was never implemented. 

Starting on April 30, 1916, the German Empire and Austria-Hungary each organized the first nationwide implementation in their jurisdictions. Many countries have used DST at various times since then, particularly since the 1970s energy crisis. DST is generally not observed near the equator, where sunrise and sunset times do not vary enough to justify it. Some countries observe it only in some regions: for example, parts of Australia observe it, while other parts do not. The United States observes it, except for the states of Hawaii and Arizona. (Within the latter, however, the Navajo Nation does observe it, conforming to national practice). A minority of the world’s population uses DST; Asia and Africa generally do not observe it. (your quick history lesson thanks to Wikipedia:)

So, what does all of this have to with photography? Glad you asked!

Every digital camera automatically records the date and time in the metadata in your images. But, what date and time is dependent on you setting it correctly. This is one of the first things your new camera will ask you to do when first turning it on-set the language, then set the date and time. Many people skip right over this in their hurry to begin playing with their new toy. “I’ll take care of it later” they say-but rarely does it become a priority. So, what’s the big deal? Well, nothing to some people. If that’s you, you’re probably a last-born:), but to us Type A personalities, and those of us who treasure the cataloging of our images in chronological order-it’s a really big deal!

Here’s a great example of why… Last year, I spent the weekend at two different places photographing rusty cars. Since I was bracketing, I shot thousands of images each day. When I loaded them into Lightroom, viewing the images in chronological order, in some cases the two places were intermingled/mixed up. Others were ok. What happened? I didn’t realize that my Olympus cameras operated on a 24 hour clock, and so I was off by 12 hours for many of the images😣 Still, what’s the big deal?

Well, (at the original time of writing this), I am leading workshops this year at both of those places, and preparing classes for both of those events-so it’s kind of important that I have the right subjects lined up with the right places-false advertising and all that stuff… And there were so many rusty autos – I couldn’t remember which one was where. I’d hate for someone to look forward to shooting say, a certain rusty truck-or airplane, based on the images they saw, only to find I was mixed up and it wasn’t where they signed up to go. See what I mean?

It’s an even bigger deal if you shoot with more than one camera. If you don’t have those synced down to the second, the images will be out of order. Again, for the average person, maybe that’s not a big deal, but what if you’re a professional say-wedding photographer, and you’re using more than one camera-and you also have a second shooter? What a nightmare that would be to go through the images to pick out your best ones when they are all over the place! Incidentally, I’m speaking from first-hand experience! And, YES, you can go back in Lightroom and change the metadata to the correct date or time, but considering the scenario above with the rusty cars, that would also be a time-consuming nightmare!

All that to say, in my opinion, it takes FAR LESS TIME to set it correctly, than messing with the results of not doing so.

So, Sunday morning March 12(2023-if you’re reading this after the fact), at 2am we set the clocks ahead one hour. If you don’t plan on using your camera over the next several days-why not go ahead and change your time right now? Grab all your cameras at once and get them matched at least to the minute. In case you’re reading this after the fact, there’s no time like the present to at least check. With cameras that I haven’t used in awhile, I have often found that I don’t actually need to change the time-because I missed it in the fall🙄

One last thing… someone once told me that their camera changes the time automagically-like happens with your watch and cell phone. If you have a camera that does so-let me know in the comments. I would guess it would depend on whether it has WiFi or bluetooth capability, and whether or not that is turned on. My Olympus cameras can be updated automatically using the Olympus software, and with bluetooth turned on.

And, you’re welcome if you got that song stuck in your head😝

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