Looking back, looking forward
I’ve been working on a couple of projects in LightRoom for the past 2 weeks, organizing my photos and looking back over past work. I have specific reason for doing this, but I also think its good to go back over my older work from time to time with fresh eyes. I see how far I’ve come in the past 7 years, but more importantly I re-discover the excitement of photography that drew me to to the craft in the first place.
It’s hard sometimes to get the same excitement about a recent photo shoot. I usually take a few days before I edit the images from a shoot because it’s all too familiar. I’m excited to see how the shots turned out, but when the shoot is fresh in my mind I tend to see all the weaknesses in the photos. I see the strengths too, but the weaknesses are exaggerated in the beginning. When I look at photos I made a couple of years ago, I can see them the same way I see another photographer’s work. I can see the merits of the photo as it is, instead of comparing it to the idea in my mind about how it should have been.
Project #1, which I work on in my down time, is key-wording all my images and, as a result, building my own little hierarchy of keywords. I was working on building a keyword list based on the International Press Telecommunications Council standards, but it’s a lot of work to edit it down to a form that LightRoom will recognize, so I ended up building my own tree organically. I still plan to finish the IPTC list and I will probably share it with the LR community, but I don’t expect to add it to my old images once it is done.
Project #2 is scanning my catalog for images to include in various collections. One is the “Tao of Seeing” collection; I will be submitting this portfolio to a new magazine that focuses on art and spirituality, so I need to pull enough images together for that. Another is collecting some event coverage work to round out my portfolio so I could submit it to an editor whom I was recently introduced to. And the third is pulling new images for the “Auto Deco” series for possible inclusion in a calendar, which I plan on having ready by the first week of December so it is ready for the holidays.
I’m off for the next few days with family in town for the holidays. Most of you reading this are my American friends, so Happy Thanksgiving!