The Photos you've already made are the most important
I had a realization recently. It was something that struck me so profoundly that I felt I had to share. The clue is in the headline. It has become clear to me that the photographs that we have already made are the most important – even more important than the photographs we’re going to make.
How often do you churn out new photographs? Daily? Weekly? Perhaps monthly if you’re more conservative. With the demands of modern media, there’s a high chance you’re constantly concentrating on creating new photographs.
Another question: at what rate do you share your photographs online? If you’re lost in the algorithms it’s likely you’re posting images multiple times a day, resulting in a constant need to create new work. Photographs that were valuable today are forgotten tomorrow.
Those photos get pushed to one side for new (and not necessarily better) work. They’re resigned to living on our hard drive and our cloud storage, seldom viewed and rarely given a thought.
Perhaps the worst part of that is many photographers — myself included —- struggle to look at old work because they feel it’s inferior to more recent creations. Of course, a progression in skill happens, and it’s a good thing. However, more often than not, it’s not about the work being better, but rather the vision is different.
I encourage you to go through your archives. Spend anywhere between 10 minutes and an hour with the photographs you have already made. I suspect the following will happen…
First of all, you’ll reconnect to old emotions and mindsets. Perhaps it will be easier to manage the pain from the past by reconnecting to those images you made. Even better, you may reconnect to the joy you had during that period of your life, as the photographs served as visual reflections of your happiness.
Next, and my personal favorite, you’ll feel a sense of gratitude for what photography has given you throughout your journey. The doors it opened, the places it took you, the people it connected you with. All of that life data exists within the images you created.
The biggest teaching, however, may come in the form of your past abilities. When I look at work I have not viewed for a while, I realize none of it is bad. I see things I did not originally see because I was too busy moving on to creating the next image. I understand that all my work has a significant meaning.
Personally speaking, I see photography as a documentation of my life. And while our modern-day gurus tell us to live in the moment, there’s so much emotional and mental value in revisiting the past through our photographs.
None of this means stop making images. However, I do believe we have become imbalanced in regard to what we have done and what we feel we constantly need to do.
We made all those past photographs for a reason. It’s a good idea to reconnect to that reasoning from time to time. Do you agree?
If you liked this post, I’d be very grateful if you shared it with someone you think may like it too. Thanks for reading.
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