Dear Photo Diary: I am but a humble amateur photographer
Dear photo diary,
Today I am sharing some leftover photos that I don’t think I have shared before. I hope that’s okay with you. I am the queen of random after all, so that’s not too unexpected, right?
I am not sure when I created the “photography” category on my blog, but I’m so glad I did. I enjoy sharing some of my many, many photos here from time to time. The backlog is wast! I enjoy editing them, and writing about them and seeing them again. I am a connoisseur of photography I guess, especially my own, because it holds personal meaning to me. But I also enjoy other’s photography projects and ideas, and I love learning about how they think of their photo projects. My biggest photo project to date is: documenting my life. It’s ongoing, fortunately.
I am but a humble amateur when it comes to photography, but I really love documenting the everyday with my camera. I love picking it up to shoot the little things surrounding me, and I have written about its power many times. There’s something magic in photography, and it is still amazing how digital photography revolutionized our world. Without it, we wouldn’t see things in the same way, or remember it, or get to share our friend’s everyday in the same way either. I love documenting the changes I notice in nature or in my own plants, how the light comes in through the windows, how our rooms change all the time but some things stay the same through the years.
A lot of photographers mostly enjoy the gear or the act of photographing, but I love looking at my photos. I love arranging them, creating photo book layouts, seeing the photos together on the page or on the blog, for example.
To delete or to keep, that’s the question
I love downloading the photos to my computer to see them big for the first time. That’s when you will really know if it’s a keeper or a dud. I love seeing 10 photos of the same thing at once, and deciding which one to edit and keep. I have deleted more photos than most people take in a lifetime. I am good with that. I could delete even more, but as the years pass its harder to cull the old photos because those moments will never happen again. Some of the people in the photos are gone for ever. Some items broke, some places no longer mine. It’s much easier to cull in the moment I have learned, and to me it’s a must-go-through-process.
Without the culling the way I photograph would be crazy. And looking through just one of the photo folders would be overwhelming and take for ever. I only want to keep the photos I want to look at again. I delete blurry photos that I don’t love and all the photos where my people look funny (blinking, making a face, not looking like themselves and photos that are not flattering). I delete all doublets, all photos that I am not happy with the composition of. How you do this is different to every photographer I think, but when you learn how easy deleting is, you feel free to snap more photos in the future.
Anyway, here’s a decorative item, a metal house, one of few things I bought “new” myself, something that is not thrifted, gifted or inherited.
It’s rather big and made for a tea light, but I haven’t had a candle inside it for many years. It’s just too fiddly to open it from the underside to stick in a lit candle. I think this new solution that I came up with is much better: a very small chain of twinkle lights with the battery operated switch outside so you can turn it on and off like a lamp. Genius if you ask me.
I have thousands and thousands photos that I never shared anywhere. Little vignettes from my work table, WIP that I finished before I got around to sharing all the cute photos (or abandoned the project and therefor never shared an update on). Art journaling pages in process from years ago, that I never blogged but have thoughts on (still). This kind of irks me at times, even thought it shouldn’t. I know that I can’t share it all, and maybe that should never have been the aim. But again, it really feels weird to take a series of photos intended for a particular blog post and then never writing it out. It’s like those thoughts are jam stuck on my brain, and I can’t wipe it of. It’s sticky but still as vivid as before, so colorful and with a delicious strawberry smell… but it’s not edible anymore so it’s annoying.
This internal cue is very much a part of my everyday life, and I wish I could get out of it sometimes. It’s not just about photos and blog posts, but craft projects, events and things I didn’t say to someone years ago. I said I love you to my grandmother, and to my family many many times, and maybe that’s what I should focus on. Not the things I did not do, or say, or share online. :-) And while writing all this out, I got to share a few more photos that I personally like. I hope you did too.
Do you take more photos than you keep, and if so, how does your culling process look like? Do you have an internal cue of things to do, or things you should’ve done a long time ago too, or is it just me? Share in the comments, I’d love to feel less alone today.
xo
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I do this too. I almost feel naked if my phone (aka camera) is not with me. I take pictures of so many things that I mean to share, screenshots of things I mean to look up, and on and on and on. I rarely cull, and I know that’s why I can’t upload the most recent (AI!!!) update on my iPhone. Thanks for what you do and I hope this makes you feel less alone on what is a blustery Saturday here in Washington, DC.
Thanks for sharing Suzi, you indeed made me feel a little bit less alone here. :)
I do backup all keepers from the phone to my computer, and eventually delete them from the phone or I’d have run out of storage 8 years ago.
I love this new photography category in your blog. You do have the photographer’s eye.
Thanks Christy!
But I didn’t mean to imply it was new, just that I love the fact I have it to play with. My Dear Photo Diary series is many many years old and full of my favourite photos. :)
I love your plants!
I delete photos all the time, mostly because I’ll take a dozen of the dog and they will all look exactly the same!
Thanks Nicole, keeping one favourite in a series is a great practice not just for storage space but for being able to enjoy the photos that you end up keeping.
Oh my gosh, like you, I have 1000s of photographs “unshared” and yet I cannot resist taking more — every day. I think in the era when we started blogging we could keep the projects and blog posts in sync and then as the years progressed at some point we got “behind” and now there are many full projects, challenges, etc. not blogged about. It’s like a blog post puts a “finishing touch” on a project and when I haven’t blogged about something it feels loose like fringe, unfinished.
Thanks. That’s what it feels like. Always being way behind on everything.
I have hard drives fuuuuuull of photos I really need to get back to – one of my goals this year is to start making photobooks out of them. As a former pro photographer, my own collection always came second to client photos! I especially like the flowers in your winter diptych, the light and those shadows is reminiscent of a still life by the old masters
I do take a lot of photos too. On my phone during the days and what ever jumps infant of my camera. I have to go through my phone and delete a lot of stuff. I always run out of storage and since my phone is my mine means of working when shooting video and content for clients I need to reduce. I sometimes delete stuff I would otherwise keep.
When I use the DSLR I am better in going through and culling right when uploading. I used to be really bad at it and kept so so many images. Now looking back I sometimes wonder if I should delete those or keep storing them. It is very hard.