Look Through Your Old Images
It doesn’t matter how old you are, have a look through your old photographs.
I mention age simply because many of you reading this will still be relatively new to photography. You may even be very young and have taken charge of your first, or one of your first, cameras. For those in this category you may not have many “old” photographs. In fact you may not have any at all.
For the older ones amongst us we will still remember the times when film was the only medium. If you are like me, you will have stacks of old photographs lying around the house.
They are valuable not just in a sentimental way, but in an educational respect also. If you look through them you will gain a sense of how you have progressed through the years (or months).
You may find images that you thought were perfectly acceptable then but which, on hindsight, are less than spectacular. Blown highlights. Blocked in shadows. Poor focussing and unsatisfactory depth of field.
You may notice incorrect composition, adverse lighting and camera shake. In fact you might notice a whole range of negative factors.
None of this should worry you! In fact, you can be congratulated for noticing these faults. It means that, however long you photographic career has been, you have progressed to the extent that you can recognise now what you couldn’t then. This is education.
Eric Hartwell runs the photography resource site http://www.theshutter.co.uk and the associated discussion forums as well as the regular weblog at http://thephotographysite.blogspot.com
