New Year, new me, I thought. At the end of every year I look back at the work I did that year to reminisce about the great times, thanking my lucky stars that I get to take photos of people that want me to! I couldn’t be any more humbled by that simple fact. This year I saw that 2014 file staring back at me once I finished looking at 2017 and took a deep breathe and strolled in.
I’ve seen fellow photographers brave enough to post some of their earlier work. These photographers are those that I dream to be able to achieve their success someday. But, they too started out somewhere. It’s important to remember that we all start out somewhere and we are generally always going to be better tomorrow than we are today. The experiences that we’ve been through have helped all of us know, “Ok, that didn’t work for me because x,y and z and now I know to go about it this other way.”
With that said, I found a session that 4 years ago, I thought was the cat’s meow. I worked SO HARD on the editing and fell in love over and over with the location and just the sheer concept of the shoot. See, I went to New Mexico to shoot at the White Sands National Monument. If you’ve not heard of this, homework-must look it up! I was literally in what looked to be a desert in the United States of America. I couldn’t get over this. Now, the fella in my shoot was in the Air Force and his wife is also a creative like me, so we had a blast. Fast forward 4 years and my editing was off for my current workflow. I knew that in order for me to analyze my growth, I had to re-edit that whole session.
Trust me when I tell you-this helped me tons. Even suttle improvements that I’ve realized across the years like making sure your horizon level is straight or the rule of thirds is in play to a little more intermediate improvements like understanding the highlights and using your spot corrector were major. I sat back and was so thankful to have given myself this opportunity to be thankful how far I’ve come and get even more excited to know that in another 2 years from now, how much more I’ll improve as well. I’ve included 2 examples of my before and after final edits, 4 years apart.
Here’s to your improvements and celebrating where you are today!
franchescafread