looking back

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I've been looking back over most of a my color slides from the past year (got a new lightbox for Christmas), and it's interesting to see what feelings the "old" images evoke now. How often do others out there review images from times passed (or at least far enough in the past that the evaluation of the photos is colored by different priorities or emotions)? Is there a consistent change in the way you view the older images, or is it highly variable?

[Image below was shot exactly one year ago.]



-- Mike Dixon (mike@mikedixonphotography.com), January 14, 2002

Answers

I got a new scanner a few months ago and have been slowly going through almost everything. I've found some shots I really like that I completely missed. Or maybe what I like changed. A lot of people talk about "round filing" images that aren't "keepers." I think that's a big mistake, other than blank frames, you never know what you will like one year later.

This is a nice shot, but, as you know, I go for your edgier stuff. If her expression were just a bit twisted...

She looks familiar :-)

-- Jeff Spirer (jeff@spirer.com), January 14, 2002.


First off, I like this image for the dots of light floating around her head. It never occured to me that these out-of-focus dots could be used to tie the foreground and background together! Like pixie dust ...

As far as your questions are concerned; "how often"? Probably not often enough. I've just been going through my old slides in preparation for my website I'm preparing, and I'm finding that the photos I'm selecting suggest a different emphasis or focus than what I thought my interests were. This review has helped me re-evaluate in which direction I want to develop.

-- Chris Marolf (70214.2664@compuserve.com), January 16, 2002.


"...or at least far enough in the past that the evaluation of the photos is colored by different priorities or emotions..."

I took about a 15 year break in my photography hobby (started back up around April of 2000)...so I immediately went thru the old stuff, found some surprises that weren't considered "keepers" in the fair to poor stuff...nowadays, I probably review (apprx) the past 6 months every 3 months or so....the evaluation and re-evaluation usually seems to differ with the "closeness" to the actually picture taking event...some times I don't like the pic because it wasn't how I "saw" it...so coming back 3 months later eliminates that "bias"...sometimes the closeness gets in the way of properly evaluting it and I come back 3 months later and it's "why did I ever think this was so good?" That is the usual...sometimes I just totally overlooked it the first time...didn't bother with the lupe, just eyeballed it and said nope...but with a little minor cropping later, it works

-- T.S. Sullivan (thomas.sullivan@baesystems.com), January 16, 2002.


This has all the elements to be a really stunning image - particularly if printed mural size. Right now, there's just a bit too much pull to the right, but that would be easy to fix with some digital tweaking.

I've been particularly interested in getting "painterly" effects from color shots.

-- John Kantor (jkantor@mindspring.com), January 18, 2002.


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