Revisiting the past

I’ll be honest, I rarely like to go through my archives.

When it comes to photography, I would say I am someone is always looking ahead to new opportunities and projects.

Once a photograph is taken, printed and/or shared, that’s usually it for me. I’ve re-edited a few images in the past, but rarely have I preferred the reworked versions over the originals.

That said, while scrolling through various Twitter discussions on the #ArchivePhotoSunday last week, @Givemeabiscuit posted “Do people feel they can only post new work on here? Personally I think it good to revisit archive shots, maybe even edit them differently based on new experience & also share with new followers.”

This got me thinking. With the lockdown and the winter months, the opportunities for going out and taking new photographs, have been slim pickings.

Winter is usually a time of year when I can be found out in the Surrey Hills or Richmond Park, during the early hours of the day. With the lockdown, I’m not sure if this is even legal at the moment. So being the cautious fella that I am, I’ve strictly stayed in my local borough, only taking photos during walks to the supermarket.

Going through the archives, allows me to revisit these places – albeit without actually going to them (which isn’t as fun, granted).  By tackling these images now, many years later, it means I am looking at them with a fresh perspective – with new tools and more experience.

Later on, I found myself going through my archives and reworking old photos. This included a number of images that I took during a trip to Jamaica back in 2009.

Now, these images were taken on a Nikon D40, back in 2009. This was the first DSLR that I ever owned, and these images were edited from files that were originally uploaded to my Flickr account. So, whether the original jpgs still exist, I am not sure.

I suspect I originally corrected the exposure and contrast on these, and left it at that. Around this time, I had a nasty habit of adding filters in photoshop, with the intention of giving images a bit of “gloss”. Looks like I was wise enough to avoid that with these images!

All in all, I found the experience a bit of an eye opener, and in light of the lockdown, it was a nice little side project to keep me entertained and engaged for a few hours. Most importantly, it reminded me that there is a world outside, waiting for lockdown to be lifted, which we can all explore it again.

So in the meantime, have a dig through your archives and give some of your older images a fresh look.